


A Dangerous Liaison

by Holly Sykes (Artemis8147)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Sherlock Holmes, Brief Sherlock/Moriarty relationship, Class Issues, Eventually Baker Street, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Infidelity, Lady Chatterley's Lover fusion, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Masturbation, No period-typical homophobia, Oral Sex, Slow Burn, The Roaring Twenties, Top John Watson, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-06-09 06:32:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 89,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6893908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis8147/pseuds/Holly%20Sykes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is married to crippled aristocrat Sir Victor Trevor and he has shunned the life of the flesh in favour of that of the mind.<br/>But what happens when he meets rugged gamekeeper John Watson, a disillusioned ex soldier with a murky past?<br/>Love and physical passion come up against the class divide, but there's also a murder, the high society of 1920s London and Sherlock in costume.</p><p> </p><p>Inspired by Lady Chatterley’s Lover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Life After Arcadia

**Author's Note:**

> The characters belong to ACD and the BBC. The story is mine (and D. H. Lawrence's), so please do not post anywhere else without express permission.
> 
> Comments and kudos (and drawings) are much appreciated.
> 
> Note: many people are concerned at the relationship between Sherlock and Moriarty: don't be. It's temporary and integral to the plot. John and Sherlock will end up together, as it should be.

We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

This was Sherlock’s position in the year 1920, as he found himself married to a crippled man and inhabiting the forlorn Fansworth Hall, a manor in the smoky Midlands and his young husband's family “seat”.

Sir Victor Trevor had acquired the title of Baronet ever since Sir Geoffrey, his father, had died in 1918 soon after his son had returned from war in a wheelchair.

Thus, Sherlock Holmes would have become Lord Trevor, had he cared for the title.

If Victor was landed aristocracy, his husband belonged to the upper class intelligentsia. His father, Sir Malcolm Holmes was a celebrated R.A (Royal Academician) and his late mother Violet had been a member of the forward-thinking Fabian Society during what were the dregs of the Pre-Raphaelite era.

Between artists and cultured socialists, Sherlock and his older brother Mycroft had had what might be called an aesthetically unconventional upbringing.

In 1913, when Sherlock was 19 and Mycroft 23, they had been sent to Paris to acquaint themselves with “real life”.

Mycroft, a studious and somewhat cynical youth, had shunned the most obvious pursuits and elected to consort with erstwhile politicians, budding economists and other suave men on the brink of grandeur; some of them were under suspicion of being spies and traitors, but the elder Holmes navigated the most perilous of seas always emerging as unscathed as his Bond Street three-piece suits.

Sherlock was a different matter altogether.

While his mind was as brilliant as his brother’s, he had none of Mycroft’s respect for conventions or authority.

Once in Paris, he immediately set out on his quest for knowledge. Unfortunately, most of it had to do with addicting substances.

He became well known in every opium den and brothel, where he was routinely found sprawled out on a chaise-longue or a mattress, in various stages of intoxication. He was indifferent to spirits and wine and partial to narcotics.

As for his carnal tastes, he’d realised since his early puberty that his preference lay with his own sex. He had experimented a little while at boarding school, but while abroad he could finally let himself go.

The drugs made intimacy easier, allowing him to savour all the untold mechanics of sexual intercourse between men. He found that he vastly preferred to be on the receiving end of penetration, while he madly enjoyed pleasuring his partners with mouth and hand. However, this frenzy of the flesh had lasted only as long as Mycroft had discovered his little brother’s penchant for drugs.

He’d plucked Sherlock from a smoky, dingy club, as he lay starkers and entwined with a bearded, stocky man. They were kissing and groping lazily, while sucking on a pipe.

Thankfully, they were both so far gone Mycroft’s plan had encountered little or no resistance. Without telling his father back home, he had placed Sherlock in a private rehabilitative facility and after a few months, his little brother had been as good as new.

In the meantime, war had broken and their leisurely, dreamy way of life had come to an end, perhaps forever.

Naturally, both brothers had returned to England, to their home in London’s Kensington often frequented by the famed Cambridge group that stood for freedom and a well-bred sort of emotional anarchy.

Without the drugs, Sherlock soon realised sex was of little interest to him. He wondered whether he had become desensitised to human touch or if he simply had exhausted his capacity for interaction once the dynamics had yielded all their secrets. He much preferred intelligent conversation and he could have that in spades with most of the intellectuals who came to visit his father.

As for the war, both he and Mycroft had been assigned to home-bound clerical posts, as their less than athletic constitutions impeded a more active participation in the fight against the Boche.

It was at one of his father’s Kensington parties that Sherlock had met Victor. Tall, blonde with piercing blue eyes and a strong, muscular body, Trevor was good looking and pleasant, but it wasn’t his appearance that had attracted the younger Holmes, but rather his dislike for authority. To Victor, anything to do with convention seemed ridiculous, even his own father’s preoccupation with the mines and the patriotic effort; the generals, the government, the universities, all of it was senseless and worthy of mockery.

His laughter was partly a strategy to disguise his fear of the unknown. Victor felt confident among people of his own class, but was uneasy once in the company of artists, foreigners and the vast swathes of humanity of the middle and lower classes.

He had previously spent two years at Cambridge. Now he had become a first lieutenant in a smart regiment, so he could mock at everything more becomingly in uniform.

Sherlock loved a man in uniform and he’d been intrigued by what he –wrongly – perceived was Victor’s superior knowledge and experience. The younger Holmes had mistaken Victor’s frightened cynicism for self-confidence and in 1917 he had accepted to marry him. On their wedding night, Sherlock had been astonished to find out the celebrated Lieutenant Trevor was a virgin. Their coupling had been of brief duration, clumsy and unsatisfactory, but that had not been a problem for Sherlock, whose sexual drive had been dormant for the best part of three years. He was fond of Victor and the admiration and affection were reciprocated. They were so close and Sherlock exulted a little in this intimacy which was beyond sex, and beyond the mere 'satisfaction'. Victor anyhow was not just keen on his 'satisfaction', as so many men seemed to be. No, the intimacy was deeper, more personal than that.

Sherlock’s only preoccupation was the production of an heir, as Victor was an only son. Convention dictated that same sex couples of their class should take a lover for breeding purposes, but the very idea was distasteful to either of them. In their case, Victor was supposed to be the father, but the issue was resolved in the most catastrophic way when early in 1918 he was shipped home smashed.

He was not really depressed about it, as he could moved about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the fine melancholy park, of which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be indifferent to it.

The capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He was mostly bright and cheerful, almost chirpy, with his healthy-looking face and his pale-blue, bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street. Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancy of a cripple.

There would be no children at Fansworth Hall.

  


	2. The Demi-Vierge

Sherlock and Victor came home to Fansworth Hall in the autumn of 1920.

It was a gloomy manor in brown stone, whose main body had been built in the eighteenth century, but it had been added on to till it was a sprawling construction of unspeakable ugliness.

It was situated on top of a hill and surrounded by majestic oak trees, but the scenic effect was ruined by the nearness of the Tevershall pit and, a little bit further, of the village itself, with its rows of squat brick houses topped by black slate roofs.

It was a depressing vista that went on for miles, characterised by grime, smoke and damp wretchedness.  Even on the most glorious of days, when the sun was shining and the sky enamel blue, the pit would always regurgitate grime and squalor, as if negating the existence of hope and beauty.

Sherlock had never been in such a place before; his England consisted of London and the Sussex downs: the former provided food for his restless mind, while the latter was the bucolic setting of his childhood dreams; it was in their ancestral country house in Sussex that young Sherlock had seen himself as a pirate, an explorer and finally as a renowned crime-solver.

He and Mycroft had been brilliant students, but if the elder Holmes had excelled in mathematics, economics and politics, Sherlock’s talents had been more disparate: he’d come first in his chemistry class, but he’d also shown a marked interest in literature, especially poetry, and – more worryingly – in poking his nose in situations that didn’t concern him. Stolen petty cash, infidelity, missing pets or relatives, nothing was too trivial for him, everything tickled his curiosity and his desire to find a solution. And the fact was – even though his elder brother hated to admit it – that Sherlock had the uncanny ability to connect the dots and ask the right questions; he was always one step ahead, and he was never wrong.

As he’d emerged from adolescence into adulthood, his parents had made it quite clear that a man of his class and intelligence was unsuited to a life that required one to be either lowly born or destined to solitude. No one in their right mind would have agreed to marry a man who consorted with criminals, they had said.

Sherlock’s first reaction had been to scoff and declare he would indeed live on his own, but the truth of the matter was that, unlike his brother, he needed companionship and conversation. Also unlike his brother, he had a fondness for being touched, albeit in a non-sexual way.

Therefore, his Sussex dreams had been set aside, and his London reality had taken centre-stage, with the many stimulating soirées crammed with artists and academics. But even those had become stale after a while, like being served fine caviar at every meal.

Victor had been a breath of fresh air, with his mix of rugged manliness and scathing irony and Sherlock had been drawn to him precisely because he incarnated the synthesis between city and countryside.

What he had not expected was that his husband’s Midlands home would be so entirely devoid of charm and that their neighbours would be colliers, tradesmen or other members of the landed gentry.

Sherlock felt like an interloper, almost as invisible as he had the first few years at boarding school, before he’d learnt to smooth his edges a bit in order to acquire a few, precious friends.

In Tevershall, Victor was hated and respected as the owner of the pit, but his husband, with his long, pale figure, angular face and his shock of curly black hair was as alien to them as their sooty countenances would be to Sir Malcolm, who’d never seen one outside of figurative art.

There had been no hero’s return for Victor: no one had paid him a visit or organised a guard of honour. He’d motored down from London and settled in that huge, dismal manor with the help of a few elderly servants and a cook.

What could Sherlock do but leave the situation to its own devices?

He was powerless, with no one he could turn to for help, not even Victor, whose lameness had transformed him into a cold, distant man. Yet, he needed Sherlock, and not only for his day to day routines some of which he undertook on his own, with the help of the motorised wheelchair and bath-chair or with the help of the servants. He was dependent on his husband to confirm that he existed, and despite the lack of connection and touch, Sherlock stuck to him with unflinching loyalty.

He knew that Victor had been cut to the quick: not only had his manhood been taken from him, but every certainty he’d held had been questioned and his very world shaken upside down like a snow globe. Victor Trevor was a hurt thing and Sherlock would not desert him.

Thus, they carried on, living a sort of nightmarish half-life, which had no reality in it at all and was but the stuff of ancient, unread books.

Until one day, finally, something had changed.

Victor had started writing stories. They were accounts of people he’d met in the past, before and during the war. They were clever and well written, but even Sherlock who was no literary critic, could see they lacked life: they were inert, with no human touch, as if they existed in a vacuum. What he had not understood though, was that they were an exact reproduction of the state of modern life and psychology, and therefore became unexpectedly successful.

They brought money and people down to Fansworth Hall, and one of them was Sir Malcolm. The imposing, white haired man had read the stories and decreed there wasn’t ‘much in them’, to which his son had argued that surely if they were praised and made his husband’s name famous, there must be something in them!

For Sherlock - in his present state - had started to think that nothing mattered but the reflection of reality, its simulacrum. He helped Victor in his work and they discussed endlessly about a turn of phrase or a metaphor. Everything was appearance and of real existence there was precious little.

During his visit Sir Malcolm had come out with this rather indelicate observation:

 “I hope you won't let circumstances force you into being a demi-vierge.”

“A demi-vierge!” replied Sherlock vaguely. “Why? Why not?”

“Unless you like it, of course!” said his father hastily. To Victor he said the same, when the two men were alone: “I'm afraid it doesn't quite suit Sherlock to be a demi-vierge.”

“A half-virgin!” replied Victor, translating the term to be sure of it.

“In what way doesn't it suit him” he asked stiffly.

“He’s becoming even thinner and more remote. You know he had an interlude in Paris… let’s just say he had to be saved from himself. Mycroft thinks I don’t know, more fool him,” the older man grinned, before sobering again. “Take care he doesn’t plunge into depression; he’s the nervy type and needs warmth, even though he will never ask for it.”

“He’s the most precious thing in my life: I know how to take care of him!” Victor scolded, thus ending the conversation.

He’d been angry and offended, but he’d not had the courage to talk of it with Sherlock: they were both too intimate and not intimate enough for that sort of conversation.

The truth was something Victor was no longer able to face: he was morbidly sensitive about his writing and his husband, accepting no advice or critique from anybody. He pretended success meant nothing to him, but underneath his feigned flippancy, he courted it with an ambition he could barely disguise.

One positive side effect of this situation was that he invited other writers, critics and friends to the Hall and for a while Sherlock felt like he was back in Kensington, surrounded by bright young things and their sparkling conversation.

Some of the guests were very nice to him. After all, he was a man in the prime of his life and his slanted, changeable eyes, freckled pallor and sinuous, lithe body attracted more than a few lingering glances. He was flattered, but he respected and loved his husband too much for allowing even the slightest flirtation, so he was polite but distant. He let them be kindly and disdainful, he let them feel they had no need to draw their steel in readiness.

Time went on. Whatever happened, nothing happened, because he was so beautifully out of contact. He and Victor lived in their ideas and his books. They entertained; there were always people in the house.

Time went on as the clock does, half past eight instead of half past seven.


	3. The Bitch-Goddess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enters Moriarty and sexy times happen (see tags). Sort of.

In their second winter at Fansworth, Sherlock become aware of a growing restlessness. It took hold of him, made his body twitch and jerk when he least expected it; it was like a kind of madness, a crawling of insects underneath his skin. It was true what his father had said, that he was getting thinner and more remote; his appetite had diminished, and at times he felt the unrestrained impulse of running across the park and lie down in the bracken. His heart was beating too fast and his skin was fevered; frequently, he dreamt of jumping into a pool of cold water and swim until he was exhausted, until he felt something, anything.

There was nothing in his life but Victor and his books, but that wasn’t enough to fill the void he felt inside his heart and belly. In fact, that intellectual exercise only exacerbated Sherlock’s plight, forcing him to seek refuge in the woods, a place that quickly became his only refuge, his sanctuary. But he dimly realised that even that was an illusion, as he had no real connection to the spirit of it, whatever that meant.

Sir Malcolm had suggested a remedy: “why don’t you get yourself a lover? It would to you all the good in the world.”

Later that winter, James Moriarty came for a few days. He was a young Irishman who had already made a large fortune thanks to his plays and their success in America.

Despite his popularity and wealth, his flat in Mayfair and his impeccable Bond Street clothes, he retained the countenance of a Dublin street-rat. He had large, mournful black eyes and it was obvious that he still held a grudge and a grievance: any true-born English gentleman would scorn to let such a thing appear blatant in his own demeanour. Poor Moriarty had been much kicked, so that he had a slightly tail-between-the-legs look even now.

Initially, he had been championed by the cream of London society, who ‘simply adored’ his witty society plays. That had lasted only until it had become evident that he was anti-English and that all his smartness had been harnessed to ridicule that society he was writing about.

To them, it was the lowest, most despicable of crimes and they had punished him for it, cutting him dead.

However, his plays were a resounding success across the pond, and to Victor that was worth something.

Surely Moriarty would be grateful of his invitation, when the rest of society was shunning him, and he would perhaps help Victor in his endeavour to court what Sherlock had named the bitch-goddess of success.

His husband was intensely pursuing the goddess, advertising his work in every way that was gentlemanly, stopping short of lowering himself.

Sherlock was no stranger to publicity, as his father had presided over the success of quite a few artists. However, the Royal Academy had its own well-oiled channels of advertisement, while Victor was inventing new ones every day, inviting all sorts of people to Fansworth in the quest for the ever-elusive goddess.

And Moriarty had conquered the public and made a lot of money in the process. He wasn’t happy though, because he pined to reside where he could never be: among the English upper classes. And in a way, he was the type that found a perverse pleasure in suffering and in being kicked, as if he knew that was part of his destiny and he secretly rejoiced in it.

Nevertheless he travelled with his manservant and his very neat car, this Dublin mongrel.

 

Sherlock liked him; there was a lack of self-importance in him and a frank, business-like simplicity that were extremely appealing. He knew that Victor wanted to make use of him and he had no qualms about lending a hand and answering the baronet’s most inquisitive questions.

“Money,” he explained, “is not hard to make. It’s almost second nature, with most men. And once you start, there’s no way of stopping. It’s child’s play.”

“But you have to start,” said Victor.

“Ah, yes, you have to be _inside_ , but once you have found your way in, you've made it. Money begets more money,” he explained.

“Could you have made money any other way that isn’t writing popular plays?” asked Sherlock.

“That’s it,” Moriarty exclaimed, turning his large black eyes towards him, “there’s nothing in popularity, absolutely nothing. I may be a good writer, and perhaps I am, but I don’t know _what_ makes me popular. It's like the weather, it is what it is.”

He stared at Sherlock with deep, fathomless sadness and disillusion and the younger man trembled a little. There were generations of misery in those eyes, but at the same time there was bravery and the childlike effrontery of the true outcast. Sherlock felt the unbidden impulse of touching that forlorn face, of kissing some of the despondency away.

“It’s wonderful what you have been able to do, and you still so young,” said Victor, admiringly. He was, at twenty nine, one year younger than his guest, but the war had taken such a toll that he felt both ageless and ancient, as if wisdom could be measured by pain and loss.

“Yes, I am thirty,” Moriarty replied, with a hollow laugh, “and I live with a servant. He’s a Greek and rather shrewd; I’m not sure I trust him. But I will marry, of that I’m sure.”

“You say it like it was a death sentence,” Sherlock joked.

“Well, I know it won’t be an Englishwoman or an Irish one… I would rather like to find someone close to the Oriental,” he replied, solemnly.

Sherlock contemplated him with a sort of dreamlike wonder; this strange, lonely man who had made a fortune out of his writing, but still was alone, rejected by the class he sought to please. He was almost beautiful, with his full eyes, tightly compressed mouth and queerly-arched brows. There was a quality of acquiescence that seemed ingrained, but at the same time he reminded Sherlock of a tight-coiled spring, ready to jump into the water and swim for his life. The younger man felt a sudden jolt of sympathy for this man, a mixture of compassion and revulsion that closely resembled love. He was an outcast, a reject; stupider than Victor, and yet much more assertive.

Naturally, Moriarty was immediately aware of the effect he’d had on Sherlock. He cast him a glance of detached appreciation, calculating the extent of the attraction he’d awakened in that obviously untested heart.

He knew he would always be an outsider, even in love, but sometimes even revulsion could turn to sexual gratification, as he had experienced several times before.

With Victor, he knew where he stood: he was being used, but aside from that no friendship or even mere acquaintance was possible.

But of Sherlock he was not quite sure.

 

They usually had breakfast in their rooms and, since Victor didn’t like to appear in the drawing room till lunchtime was served, there were long hours in which nothing seemed to happen.

It was a fine February morning and Moriarty was bored and restless. He sent a servant to enquire whether Lord Sherlock needed anything, as he meant to drive to Sheffield. He was asked to go up to Sherlock’s sitting room.

Sir Trevor’s quarters were on the ground floor, while his husband had a nice set of rooms on the top floor. Moriarty was quite flattered by being invited and followed the servant with eagerness, without noticing anything around him.

Once inside the room, he did see that it was a pleasant, modern one, with fine impressionist reproductions on the walls and a quantity of leather-bound books on the shelves and tables. It was clearly the only room where Sherlock’s personality had been allowed to shine through.

“You have a very nice place here,” the man observed, smiling obliquely, “clever of you to choose the top floor.”

“I think so too,” Sherlock concurred.

They sat on either side of the fireplace and talked. Sherlock asked the older man questions about his family and friends, and he replied frankly and with a tinge of pride and bitterness. Sherlock was always devoid of any class feeling, but even more so when his curiosity was awakened.

“Why are you so lonely?” he asked, and Moriarty looked at him with his penetrating, full black eyes.

“Some of us are destined to be lonely; that’s just the way it is,” he replied, “and you should know what I mean; you are a rather lonely soul too.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened and his breath caught a little.

“Not as lonely as you, for sure!” he objected.

“Aren’t you?” the man insisted, staring right into his eyes, sending out a mute appeal that rendered Sherlock speechless and quite dizzy.

“Oh, you are quite right,” he stammered.

“It’s awfully nice of you to think of me,” the Irishman said, dryly.

“Why shouldn’t I?” was the soft reply, hardly more than a whisper.

Moriarty laughed, a wry, sardonic sort of laugh.

“Oh, that’s it, isn’t it? May I hold your hand?” he asked, and cast toward Sherlock a hypnotic, magnetic gaze that transfixed the younger man, who found himself unable to answer or look away.

They stayed still, locked in that moment for a few instants, until Moriarty went over and kneeled before Sherlock, silently burying his face in the younger man’s lap.

A hoarse moan surged from Sherlock's belly, as he felt the Irishman kiss his clothed thighs, pressing his cheek to the fabric.

He was dazed as he admired the defenceless nape of the man’s neck and he couldn’t restrain the tender impulse to caress it.

That touch spurred the man into action. He parted the heavy silk of Sherlock’s dressing gown, avidly seeking warm, naked skin.

The younger man usually slept in the nude and took his breakfast in his nightclothes, but on that particular morning he’d been surprised by the message Moriarty had sent, so he’d quickly washed and put on his new dressing gown.

Thus, when the Irishman had untied the sash, he been confronted with unmarred pale skin and a bobbing, angry erection, already wet at the slit.

Sherlock flushed pink when he felt the man’s warm breath tickle his groin, but he nearly sobbed when a slick tongue lapped at his length, before skilful lips closed around his swollen glans. What followed was a frantic, angry copulation, ending abruptly as the mouth pulled away before release occurred. Sherlock was left with the task of wiping away the evidence of his lust, as the other man stood with his back to him, gazing outside the window.

Sherlock’s intense desire to reciprocate, to show appreciation and passion, was curtailed in favour of detachment.

“You will hate me now,” the man stated, coldly.

“This is the last moment when I ought to hate you,” Sherlock replied, resentfully.

“I know, I know, you have been so good to me,” Moriarty replied, somewhat unconvincingly.

“I don’t hate you,” the younger man repeated, “I think you are nice.”

“This is the best thing you could say, much better than saying that you love me.”

“But I do love you,” Sherlock mused, “only I don’t want Victor to know; it would hurt him so much and he doesn’t deserve it.”

“He certainly won’t know it from me!”

“It’s not that… I don’t think it’s wrong, what we did… do you?” Sherlock asked, wondering why the other man seemed so miserable.

“'Wrong! Good God, no! You're only too infinitely good to me...I can hardly bear it.'

He turned aside, and Sherlock saw that in another moment he would be weeping.

“May I kiss your cheek and go? I'll run into Sheffield I think, and lunch there, if I may, and be back to tea. May I do anything for you?” he ended with a desperate note of cynicism.

He didn’t wait for his answer; he kissed Sherlock's cheeks humbly and was gone.

 

 

 


	4. Modern Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exit Moriarty (so glad to be rid of him)  
> Next chapter: John, at last

Obviously, Victor disliked Moriarty. Even though Sherlock was convinced he did not suspect anything, his husband found the Irishman extremely unpleasant.

“I can stand that man,” he said over lunch, “there’s something about it that doesn’t convince me; it’s like he’s only waiting for a chance to slit our throats.”

“He’s always been misunderstood,” said Sherlock.

“Do you think he’s kind to people? He seems pretty ruthless to me."

“He’s a fighter.”

“That’s not the same as being kind.”

Sherlock pondered that perhaps Moriarty’s ruthlessness had been caused by his difficult past. Regardless of the causes, that lack of scruples had a certain fascination for Sherlock.

After all, he’d managed to make a name for himself, against pretty disastrous odds. He had conquered the world, which was what Victor wanted to do.

Was the way the poor outsider had shoved and bounced himself forward in person, and by the back doors, any worse than Victor's way of advertising himself into prominence? The bitch-goddess, Success, was trailed by thousands of gasping dogs with lolling tongues. The one that got her first was the real dog among dogs, if you go by success! So Moriarty could keep his tail up. The queerest thing was, he didn't.

 When he came back at tea-time, he wore the same mournful expression he had the previous evening.

Sherlock wondered sometimes if it were a sort of mask to disarm opposition, because it was almost too fixed.

His sad-dog sort of extinguished self persisted all the evening, though through it Victor felt the inner effrontery. Sherlock didn't feel it, perhaps because it was not directed at him. Moriarty’s very presence was an affront to society men, but Sherlock had never counted himself as one of them.

He fancied that he was in love with Moriarty, but the truth was that he didn’t know the other man at all. He’d barely met him and their first encounter had been less than satisfactory.

As for Moriarty, he was unchanged, as if he had forgotten the morning.

He had not, but it had not been half as important to him as it had been to the other man. It hadn’t brought him any real advantage; he was still an outcast, the bounder who would be despised was it not for his success and his Bond Street outfits.

Occasional love was a comfort and a pastime for him, and he embraced it with some measure of gratitude, but also with detachment.

That didn’t mean he didn’t want Sherlock again; on the contrary, he was proud of having made such a conquest and wanted to assert his powers of seduction over the younger man. Besides, he was also avenging his poor upbringing, by robbing a baronet of his most prized possession.

He found an opportunity to say to Sherlock, as they were lighting the candles in the hall:

“May I come to your room?”

“I’ll come to you,” the younger man replied, his voice trembling a little.

 

Sherlock agonised over his betrayal of Victor, but in the end he couldn’t resist, he had to go to Moriarty.

This time, they took all their clothes off and lay side by side on the bed. There was something curiously childlike and defenceless about the Irishman’s naked body.

Sherlock imagined all his defences consisted of his wit and cunning, but aside from that, he was quite innocent. Naturally, it was all in his head, part of the wild fantasies of a young man who knew very little about the lower classes and ever less about love.

This time, Sherlock had tried to initiate the act of fellatio, wanting very much to be given the opportunity to show his devotion with his mouth and tongue, but his lover had rejected his advances; he’d preferred to use his hand in the frantic, almost violent way he obviously favoured.

When Sherlock timidly did the same to him, the older man came and finished so quickly neither seem to draw any satisfaction from the act.

After the fact, there was no tender embrace or rapturous kiss: Moriarty simply caressed Sherlock’s cheek, helped him dress and before the younger man had come out of his daze, he’d practically shown him the door.

He stayed that time only the three days, and to Victor was exactly the same as on the first evening; to Sherlock also. There was no breaking down his external man.

 

He wrote to Sherlock with the same plaintive melancholy note as ever, sometimes witty, and touched with a queer, sexless affection.

They went on for quite a time, writing, and meeting occasionally in London.

Their relationship was an oddity: as a friendship it was characterised by hopeless tenderness on one side and cynicism on the other; the purely sexual side was a supreme disappointment, as Sherlock was never able to take or give what he wanted.

But at least that was life, or a least a small scrap of one.

He used all his meagre satisfaction to stimulate Victor, so that he wrote his best at this time, and was almost happy in his strange blind way.

 

In the meantime, Moriarty had seized upon Victor as the central figure for a play; already he had sketched in the plot, and written the first act. For Moriarty was even better than Victor at making a display of nothingness. It was the last bit of passion left in these men: the passion for making a display.

Perhaps it was what modern love was about, Sherlock wondered, with something akin to despair in his heart.

Sexually these new men were passionless, even dead. It was not love or even passion that Moriarty was after. He simply wanted to win some hollow context that ultimately would lead nowhere.  

To Sherlock, it was again nothingness. Even the prostitution to the bitch-goddess was nothingness, though these men prostituted themselves innumerable times. Nothingness even that.

 

Moriarty wrote to Victor about the play and Victor was again thrilled. He was going to be displayed again this time, somebody was going to display him, and to advantage. He invited Moriarty down to Fansworth Hall.

Moriarty came: in spring, in a pale-coloured suit and white suede gloves, with mauve orchids for Sherlock, very lovely, and Act I was a great success. Even Sherlock was thrilled...thrilled to what bit of marrow he had left. And Moriarty, thrilled by his power to thrill, was really wonderful...and quite beautiful, in Sherlock's eyes.

His moment of sheer thrill when he simply carried Sherlock and Victor away, was one of the supreme moments of Moriarty's life. He had succeeded: he had carried them away. Even Victor was temporarily in love with him...if that is the way one can put it.

So next morning Moriarty was more uneasy than ever; restless, devoured, with his hands twitching in his trousers pockets. Sherlock had not visited him in the night...and he had not known where to find him.

He went up to Sherlock’s sitting-room in the morning. He asked him about his play...did Sherlock think it good? He had to hear it praised: that affected him with the last thin thrill of passion beyond any sexual orgasm. And Sherlock praised it rapturously. Yet all the while, at the bottom of his soul, he knew it was nothing.

Suddenly, Moriarty seemed to have come to a momentous decision.

“Why don’t you leave Victor and marry me?”

Sherlock looked at him amazed.

“I can’t do that. He needs me for everything; I would never abandon him, no matter how heartbreaking that might be.”

He said that, yet felt nothing. Modern men, he thought, they were all alike, they only cared about their own desires and petty victories.

“Why not? but why not?” Moriarty cried. “He'll hardly know you've gone, after six months. He doesn't know that anybody exists, except himself. Why the man has no use for you at all, as far as I can see; he's entirely wrapped up in himself.”

Sherlock nearly laughed in his face, for he couldn’t see any reason why he should leave one kind of emptiness for another.

“Now consider,” he added, unfazed, “I can give you a very good time. I think I can guarantee myself.”

“And what sort of a good time?” asked Sherlock, pretending to care for his reply, but underneath feeling nothing at all.

“Every sort of a good time that money can buy: houses, travel, fun!”

He spoke it almost in a brilliancy of triumph, and Sherlock looked at him as if dazzled, and really feeling nothing at all. He just got no feeling from it, he just sat and stared and looked dazzled, and felt nothing.

“I should have to think about it,” he replied. “I couldn't say now. It may seem to you Victor doesn't count, but he does. When you think how disabled he is...”

Moriarty walked to the door, working his hands furiously in his trousers pockets.

That evening he said to Sherlock:

“You're coming round to my room tonight, aren't you?”

Sherlock decided that would be the last time and tried in every way to give the man pleasure, but the violence and swiftness of the act prevented any real satisfaction on either side.

When at last he drew away from Sherlock, Moriarty said, in a bitter, almost sneering little voice:

“You can’t just be happy with getting off, you have to have more, always more!”

This little speech, at the moment, was one of the shocks of Sherlock’s life.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You know what I mean. You are always trying to take me in your mouth when I made it very clear I’m not interested in that!”

Sherlock was stunned by this unexpected piece of brutality. 

“But you want me to have my satisfaction too, don’t you?”

The older man laughed grimly: “I want it!” he said, meaning the opposite.

“But don't you?” Sherlock insisted.

“Oh, all right! But not if that means _I don’t get what I want_.”

This speech was one of the crucial blows of Sherlock's life. It killed something in him. He had not been so very keen on Moriarty; till he started it, he did not want him. It was as if he never positively wanted him.

But that day, the Irishman had asked him to marry him. Perhaps that was why he had to bring down the whole show with a smash; the house of cards.

It was over for good, and there was nothing left for Sherlock but this empty treadmill of what Victor called the integrated life, the long living together of two people, who are in the habit of being in the same house with one another.

Nothingness! To accept the great nothingness of life seemed to be the one end of living.

Little did Sherlock know that the best, most magnificent part of his life was yet to come.


	5. The soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John, at last.

On a cold spring morning with a little timid sun, Victor and Sherlock went for a walk across the park to the wood. That is, Victor was riding in his motor-chair, and Sherlock walked beside him.

The air was still heavy with the fumes of the pit, but they were both used to it. Round the near horizon went the haze, opalescent with smoke, topped by the somewhat dismal blue sky: it was like being inside a squalid temple, always inside. Inside that temple, life was always a dream or a frenzy.

The park was cut through by a path to the wood-gate; Victor had had it newly gravelled with sifted gravel from the pit-bank. When the rock and refuse of the underworld had burnt, it turned pink, shrimp-coloured on dry days, darker, crab-coloured on wet. It always pleased Sherlock, this underfoot of sifted, bright pink. Victor steered cautiously down the slope from the hall, and Sherlock kept his hand firmly on the chair. In front lay the wood, the hazel thicket nearest, the purplish density of oaks beyond.

Sherlock opened the gate, and Victor puffed slowly through into the broad path that ran up an incline between the thickets of the hazel. The wood was a remnant of the great forest where Robin Hood had hunted, and this path was an ancient thoroughfare cutting across the country.

A jay called harshly, many little birds fluttered. But there was no game, no pheasants. They had been killed off during the war, and the wood had been left unprotected, till now Victor had got his game-keeper again.

 

Victor loved the wood. He felt the oak trees were his own through generations and he wanted to protect them. He wanted this place inviolate, shut off from the world.

The chair went slowly up the incline, rocking and jolting, and suddenly, on the left, came a clearing where there was nothing but dead bracken and big sawn stumps showing their tops and their grasping roots, lifeless. Patches of blackness showed where the woodmen had burned the brushwood and rubbish.

This was one of the places that Sir Geoffrey had cut during the war for trench timber. The whole knoll, which rose softly on the right of the path, was bleak and forlorn. Where the oaks had stood, now was bareness; and from there you could look out over the trees to the colliery railway. Sherlock had stood and looked: it was a breach in the pure seclusion of the wood. It let in the world.

He didn't tell Victor, as this barren place always made his husband angry. He had been through the war, had seen what it meant. But he didn't get really angry till he saw this bare hill. .

Victor sat with a fixed face as the chair slowly mounted. When they came to the top of the rise he stopped; he would not risk the long and very jolty down-slope. He sat looking at the greenish sweep of the riding downwards, a clear way through the bracken and oaks.

“I consider this is really the heart of England,” said Victor to Sherlock, as he sat there in the pale sunshine.

“Do you?” his husband said, sitting down on the damp grass.

“I do! This is the old England, the heart of it; and I intend to keep it intact.”

“I see,” said Sherlock, unconvinced. As he said it he heard the eleven-o'clock bells at Stacks Gate colliery. Victor was too used to the sound to notice.

“I want this wood perfect...untouched. I want nobody to trespass in it,” said Victor.

There was a certain pathos. The wood still had some of the mystery of wild, old England;. The place remembered, still remembered.

Victor sat completely still, with the light on his smooth, rather blond hair, his reddish full face inscrutable.

“I mind more, not having a son, when I come here, than any other time,” he said.

“But the wood is older than your family,” said Sherlock, gently.

“But we've preserved it. Except for us it would be gone already, like the rest of the forest. One must preserve some of the old England!”

“Must one?' said Sherlock, in a sceptic tone of voice. “If it has to be preserved, and preserved against the new England?”

“If some of the old England isn't preserved, there'll be no England at all,” said Victor. “We must preserve it,” insisted.

There was a sad pause. “Yes, maybe,” said Sherlock.

“One must keep up tradition.” Again there was a pause.

“What tradition?” asked Sherlock. He suddenly felt like he’d been lied to from the start. When Victor had come to their house in Kensington and courted him, he’d been such a different man, so unlike this meek, conventional snob.

“The tradition of England, of this!'”

“Yes,” Sherlock said slowly, his heart dying a little bit more, inside his chest.

“That's why having a son helps; one is only a link in a chain,” Victor proclaimed.

Sherlock was not keen on chains, but he said nothing.

“I'm sorry you can't have a son,” he said. It was cruel what he’d just said, he knew it. But he had been wronged too, in a most perverse way, by the man he married. The war surely was responsible for having crippled his body, but could it always be the pretext for such a major change in his personality? Betrayals, it seemed to Sherlock that his life was disseminated with it, to the point when he no longer knew what loyalty and truth were.

He looked at him steadily, with stormy eyes.

“You could have a child, for us” Victor replied, unaware of the tempest in Sherlock’s soul, or perhaps uncaring; who could tell?

Sherlock could have screamed. A child, like he could do that, with a woman. He shuddered in disgust.

“I’d have to… with a woman,” he murmured.

“Does it matter very much? It is nothing but a moment and it’s soon over. Our love resides elsewhere; our intimacy is in the communion of our minds. We have the habit of each other, and that is more vital than any occasional excitement. The long, slow, enduring thing...that's what we live by...not the occasional spasm of any sort.”

Sherlock sat and listened in a sort haze of horrified distaste.

“You wouldn’t mind the fact that I… loathe the idea?”

“I would trust you to do the best thing for us.”

Sherlock was silent. Logic might be unanswerable because it was so absolutely wrong. He replied in the only way he knew might perhaps get through to him, even though it was hurtful.

“You may be right. The fact is life may decide for us. We may fall out of love, or I could be unable to…”

Victor’s lips blanched and tightened.

“We don’t have to decide anything now. We can talk again later.”

Sherlock nodded, distracted by the brown spaniel that had run out of a side-path, and was looking towards them with lifted nose, barking softly. A man with a gun walked swiftly after the dog, facing their way as if about to attack them; then stopped instead, saluted, and turned to go downhill.

It was only the new game-keeper, but he had frightened Sherlock, he seemed to emerge with such a swift menace. That was how he had seen him, like the sudden rush of a threat out of nowhere.

He was a short, blond man in dark green velvet coat and trousers, with a tanned face and warm blue eyes. He was going quickly downhill.

“Watson!” called Victor.

The man faced lightly round, and saluted with a quick little gesture. A soldier, thought Sherlock, the old thrill of the uniform vibrating deep in his belly.

“Will you turn the chair round and get it started? That makes it easier,” said Victor.

The man at once slung his gun over his shoulder, and came forward with the same curious swift, yet soft movements, as if keeping invisible. He was muscular but not thickset, and was silent. He did not look at Sherlock at all, only at the chair.

“Sherlock, this is the new game-keeper, John Watson. You haven't spoken to my husband yet, Watson?”

“No, Sir!” came the ready, neutral words.

The man removed his hat, showing his thick, fair hair. He stared straight into Sherlock's eyes, with a perfect, fearless, impersonal look, as if he wanted to see what he was like. He made the younger man feel shy. He bent his head to him timidly, and Watson changed his hat to his left hand and made him a slight bow, like a gentleman; but said nothing at all. He remained for a moment still, with his hat in his hand.

“You've been here some time, haven't you?” Sherlock said to him.

“Eight months, Sir...your Lordship!” he corrected himself calmly. Sherlock felt the sting of that formal tone, like a rough caress on his cheek.

“And do you like it?”

Watson looked him in the eyes. His eyes narrowed a little, with irony, perhaps with impudence.

“Yes, thank you, your Lordship! I was reared here...” Again that tone of voice, mocking, but also caressing, if a bit unschooled. Sherlock’s insides quivered in response.

Watson gave another slight bow, turned, put his hat on, and strode to take hold of the chair. His voice on the last words had fallen into the heavy accent of the area, surely in mockery, because there had been no trace of that before. He might almost be a gentleman. Anyhow, he was a curious fellow, alone, but sure of himself.

Victor started the little engine, the man carefully turned the chair, and set it nose-forwards to the incline.

“Is that all then, Sir Victor?”  asked the man.

“No, you'd better come along in case he sticks. The engine isn't really strong enough for the uphill work.”

The man glanced round for his dog, a thoughtful glance. The spaniel looked at him and faintly moved its tail. A little smile, ironic yet gentle, came into Watson’s eyes for a moment then faded away, and his face was expressionless. They went fairly quickly down the slope, the man with his hand on the rail of the chair, steadying it. He looked like a free soldier rather than a servant.

When they came to the hazel grove, Sherlock suddenly ran forward, and opened the gate into the park. As he stood holding it, the two older men looked at him in passing, Victor critically, Watson with a curious, cool wonder; impersonally wanting to see what Sherlock looked like. And Sherlock saw in his blue eyes a look of suffering and detachment, yet definite warmth. But why was he so aloof, apart?

Victor stopped the chair, once through the gate, and the man came quickly, courteously, to close it.

“Why did you run to open?” asked Victor in his quiet, calm voice, that showed he was displeased. “Watson would have done it.”

“I just wanted to do it myself,' replied Sherlock.

Watson took the chair again, looking perfectly unheeding, yet Sherlock felt he had noticed his exchange with Victor. As he pushed the chair up the steep rise, he breathed rather quickly, through parted lips. He was rather frail really. Curiously full of vitality, but a little frail too. Sherlock’s instincts told him that, and he immediately wanted to know more about the man, what had happened to him in the army.

Sherlock fell back, let the chair go on. The day had greyed over and now there was a raw coldness in the air.

The chair waited at the top of the pink path. Victor looked round for Sherlock.

“Not tired, are you?” he said.

“Oh, no!” Sherlock replied.

But he was. A strange, weary yearning, a dissatisfaction had started in him. Victor did not notice: those were not things he was aware of. But the stranger knew; he seemed to read Sherlock like a book.

They came to the house, and around to the back, where there were no steps. Victor managed to swing himself over on to the low, wheeled house-chair; he was very strong and agile with his arms. Then Sherlock lifted the burden of his dead legs after him.

The keeper, waiting at attention to be dismissed, watched everything narrowly, missing nothing. He went pale when he saw Sherlock lifting the inert legs of the man in him arms, into the other chair, Victor pivoting round as he did so.

“Thanks, then, for the help, Watson,” said Victor casually, as he began to wheel down the passage to the servants' quarters.

“Nothing else, Sir?” came the neutral voice, like one in a dream.

“Nothing, good morning!”

“Good morning, Sir. Your Lordship,” he added, looking Sherlock in the eye with a glance that said a million things and made the younger man dizzy.

“Good morning! It was kind of you to push the chair up that hill...I hope it wasn't heavy for you,” said Sherlock, looking back at the keeper outside the door.

Watson’s eyes stayed on his, intense and searching.

“Oh no, not heavy!” he said quickly. Then his voice dropped: “Very glad to have been of service, your Lordship!'

Sherlock felt that low, insinuating tone in his guts, tugging at a chord he never knew existed.

 

“Who is your game-keeper?” Sherlock asked Victor at lunch, trying to appear indifferent.

“Watson! You saw him,”

“Yes, but where did he come from?'

“Nowhere! He was a Tevershall boy...son of a collier, I believe.”

“And was he a collier himself?”

“Blacksmith on the pit-bank, I believe: overhead smith. But he was keeper here for two years before the war...before he joined up. My father always had a good opinion of him, so when he came back, I just took him back here as keeper. I was really very glad to get him...it’s almost impossible to find a good man round here for a gamekeeper...and it needs a man who knows the people.”

“And isn't he married?”

Let him not be married, Sherlock silently pleaded.

“He was. He left his wife when he went to war. There is a rumour he had an affair with an officer there. His wife is living with another man, but she’s still Mrs Watson.”

Sherlock felt a violent pang of jealousy at the mention of that name.

“So this man is alone?”

“More or less! He has a mother in the village...and a child, I believe.”

Victor looked at Sherlock, with his pale, slightly prominent blue eyes, in which a certain vagueness was coming. He seemed alert in the foreground, but the background was like the Midlands atmosphere, haze, smoky mist.

He had not noticed Sherlock’s interest in the game-keeper, nor Watson’s manner when he’d spoken to the younger man; the caressing tone of his voice, the slight effrontery. But above all, what Victor had failed to realise what that his game-keeper was a man in the old sense of the word, a strong, even brutal creature who would take what he wanted, regardless of class or money.

He would do so because of passion and love, Sherlock thought, not because of some empty desire for revenge, like Moriarty had done.

The desperation of the last few years receded from Sherlock’s heart; hope raised its timid head, as frail as the rays of the pallid spring sunshine.

But summer would come, he thought, and it was not that far away.


	6. A Thaw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love is in the (grimy, smoky) air.  
> That, and Mycroft making his appearance at Fansworth.

 

In his distressed, slightly neurotic state of mind, the last thing Sherlock needed was his brother Mycroft; and sure enough, when Victor organised one of his musical soirées, down posted Mycroft from Scotland, where he had been on some obscure business. After the war, he’d been employed by the government in what he referred to as a minor position, but Sherlock supposed – rightly – it was anything but.

Up the drive he came in his smart two-seater, sweeping round the oval of grass, where the great wild beech-trees stood, on the flat in front of the house.

Sherlock had reluctantly agreed to wait for him on the doorstep. Mycroft pulled up, got out, and eyed his younger brother up and down for a few instants, before gracing him with an exasperated eye-roll.

“Not again!” he sighed.

“What? I’m not even smoking cigarettes!” exclaimed Sherlock, rather shamefacedly; he knew how he had suffered in contrast to Mycroft. Sherlock was scrawny and pale, and his long neck seemed even thinner, sticking out of his midnight-blue velvet dinner jacket.

“You’re skin and bones,” said Mycroft, in his customary clipped tone, the one that meant he was on the case and nothing would stop him until he found a solution to the problem.

“I’m not sick. Perhaps I'm bored,” said Sherlock, knowing he was fooling no one.

The light of battle glowed in Mycroft's face.

“This awful place!” he declared, looking at poor, old, lumbering Fansworth with real hate.

They went in to Victor. He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Mycroft thought it sulky and stupid, and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Mycroft didn't care what he had an air of; he was up in arms, and if he'd been Pope or Emperor it would have been just the same.

“Sherlock's looking unwell,” he said in his deceptively soft voice, fixing him with glowering grey eyes. He looked so prim, like Sherlock did at times; but his younger brother knew the tone of steely obstinacy underneath.

“He’s a little thinner,” Victor conceded.

“I'll take him to a doctor,” said Mycroft at length, “unless you care to suggest another solution?”

“I'm afraid I can't.”

“Then I'll take him to London, where we have a doctor we trust.”

Though boiling with rage, Victor said nothing.

The guests arrived and so did the pianist, who played among the many pieces, a magnificent rendition of the Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36 by Sergei Rachmaninov that Sherlock had first heard premièred while he was in Paris in 1913.

Mycroft took one look at his brother and read his thoughts. It was a trick they both excelled at; Sherlock would have died rather than having to admit it, but he had missed the sort of Morse-code he shared with his brother.

“You are not falling back into old habits, are you little brother?”

“Why do you think the relationship between married people can be so… lacking?” Sherlock asked, with unusual frankness. He had drunk a bottle of champagne, which perhaps explained his willingness to open up.

Mycroft arched a thin eyebrow and sighed.

“I guess you’re not talking about the physical side of things,” he replied with a pained expression, “well, companionship can be enough for some people, but you have always needed more than this. You were always a romantic, even as a child.”

“I’m not a romantic!” Sherlock protested, upsetting the champagne glass he was holding. “And how would you know? You’ve never cared for…” he started, but stopped mid-sentence. “Oh, there is someone! The armour has been pierced, at last! Who is he? A spy, a member of the Royal family, a servant?” The last word was accompanied by a blush that luckily went unnoticed by a flustered Mycroft.

“A Scotland Yard man… nothing more than a friendship… at present….” the elder Holmes mumbled. The very few times he was embarrassed, he reacted exactly like Sherlock: he stammered.

His brother took pity on him and went to fetch him another glass of champagne.

 

Victor was still yellow at the gills with anger, and at the end of the evening the whites of his eyes were a little yellow too. He ran to liver. But Mycroft was like a dog with a bone.

“You must have a nurse or somebody, to look after you personally. You should really have a manservant,” he said, as they sipped their drinks. He spoke in his soft, seemingly gentle way, but Victor felt he was hitting him on the head with a bludgeon.

“You think so?” he said coldly.

“I'm sure! It's necessary. Either that, or Father and I must take Sherlock away for some months. This can't go on.”

“What can't go on?”

“Haven't you looked at him!” asked Mycroft, glaring.

“Sherlock and I will discuss it,” he said.

“It’s decided,” said Mycroft with finality.

Victor had been long enough in the hands of nurses and he hated them.

“Here is the address of a good manservant, who was with an invalid patient of the doctor's till he died last month. He is really a good man, and fairly sure to come.”

“But I'm _not_ an invalid, and I will _not_ have a manservant,” said Victor, poor devil.

“Very well, Victor. If we don't settle something by tomorrow, I shall telegraph to Father, and we shall take Sherlock away.”

“Will Sherlock go?” asked Victor.

“He doesn't want to, but he knows he must. Mother died of cancer, brought on by her nervous disposition. We're not running any risks.”

So next day Victor suggested Mrs Donovan, a widow and a nurse at Tevershall hospital.  Thus it was settled the woman would come as soon as possible.

Mycroft was satisfied and agreed to go back to London without Sherlock.

He bid goodbye to Victor - who only nodded curtly - and hugged his brother briefly, whispering in his ear. “Take care, little brother. Don’t let anyone break your heart.”

Sherlock was about to reply he didn’t have one, but that would have been the blackest of lies.

 

Days went by and the weather took a turn for the worse. It frequently rained, and the paths were too sodden for Victor's chair, but Sherlock would go out. He went out alone every day now, mostly in the wood, where he was really alone. He saw nobody there.

This day, however, Victor wanted to send a message to the game-keeper, and as the boy was laid up with influenza, somebody always seemed to have influenza at Fansworth, Sherlock said he would call at the cottage.

The air was soft and dead, as if all the world were slowly dying. The end of all things!

In the wood all was utterly inert and motionless, only great drops fell from the bare boughs, with a hollow little crash. For the rest, among the old trees was depth within depth of grey, hopeless inertia, silence, nothingness.

Sherlock walked dimly on. From the old wood came an ancient melancholy, somehow soothing to him, better than the harsh insentience of the outer world. He liked the _inwardness_ of the remnant of forest, the unspeaking reticence of the old trees. They too, were waiting: obstinately, stoically waiting, and giving off a potency of silence. Perhaps they were only waiting for the end; to be cut down, cleared away, the end of the forest, for them the end of all things. But perhaps their strong and aristocratic silence, the silence of strong trees, meant something else.

As he came out of the wood on the north side, the keeper's cottage, a rather dark, brown stone cottage, with gables and a handsome chimney, looked deserted, it was so silent and alone. But a thread of smoke rose from the chimney, and the little railed-in garden in the front of the house was dug and kept very tidy. The door was shut.

Now he was here he felt a little shy of the man, with his curious far-seeing eyes. He did not like bringing him orders, and felt like going away again. He knocked softly, no one came. He knocked again, but still not loudly. There was no answer. He peeped through the window, and saw the dark little room, with its almost sinister privacy, not wanting to be invaded.

He stood and listened, and it seemed to him he heard sounds from the back of the cottage. Having failed to make himself heard, he insisted; he would not be defeated.

So he went round the side of the house. At the back of the cottage the land rose steeply, so the back yard was sunken, and enclosed by a low stone wall. He turned the corner of the house and stopped.

 

In the little yard two paces beyond him, the man was washing himself, utterly unaware. He was naked to the hips, his velvet breeches slipping down over his slender loins. And his tanned, muscular back was curved over a big bowl of soapy water, in which he ducked his head, shaking it with a queer, quick little motion, lifting his strong arms, and pressing the soapy water from his ears, quick, subtle as a weasel playing with water, and utterly alone. Sherlock wanted to turn and run, but he was stuck to the ground, incapable of moving. In spite of himself, he had had a shock. After all, merely a man washing himself, commonplace enough; yet in some curious way, it was a visionary experience: it had hit him at very root of his manhood. He saw the clumsy breeches slipping down over the pure loins, the bones showing a little, and the sense of aloneness overwhelmed him. Perfect, white, solitary nudity of a creature that lives alone, and inwardly alone. Not the stuff of beauty, not even the body of beauty, but the red hot flame of a single life, revealing itself in contours that one might touch.

Sherlock had received the shock of vision in his most secret place, and he knew it lay inside him. But with him mind he was inclined to ridicule. A man washing himself in a back yard! No doubt with evil-smelling yellow soap! He was rather annoyed; why should he be made to stumble on these vulgar privacies? Why wasn’t he able to walk away?

As he debated nervously within himself, a dog barked in the distance and the man turned.

He didn’t flinch in surprise or show any shame. He stood there, his muscular chest dripping with water and a curious, undecipherable expression in his stormy eyes.

“Your Lordship,” he said, softly. Sherlock felt a blush start from low in his belly and spread all over him like wildfire.

Watson plucked a large bath-sheet from the back of a chair and started to towel himself dry. His eyes did not leave Sherlock’s face.

“I only called with a message… from Sir Victor,” the younger man said in a rather breathless voice.

Watson’s lips were curved in a sphinx-like smile, as he waited for Sherlock to deliver the message. A few instants passed, during which the younger man thought he must be dying, as his mind had gone utterly blank.

 “Would you care to sit down?” the game-keeper asked after a while, discarding the towel and moving a few steps closer.

“No thanks!” Sherlock blurted out. “Sir Victor wondered if you would…” and again he stopped, his throat blocked and his mind as empty as a downturned cup. The man was now so close Sherlock could see the light freckles on the bridge of his straight nose.

There was a tickling sensation on his cheek and in the next instant a short, yet not inelegant, finger reached out and tucked a tendril of hair behind Sherlock’s ear.

 “Black cherries and cream,” his deep voice murmured. “Beautiful,” and his warm breath was on the younger man’s throat. Sherlock’s heart was beating so fast he could hardly hear anything but its booming sound and his legs nearly gave out when the man undid the top button of his shirt and parted the fabric aside to reveal a pale collarbone.

Watson raised his gaze to seek permission and Sherlock couldn’t repress a deep, tremulous sigh.

“God,” the man moaned, and licked the hollow of his throat, his neck, along the length of his jaw.

“Yes,” Sherlock croaked, grasping the man’s shoulders to stay upright.

“You taste like heaven,” Watson murmured, his soft lips brushing against Sherlock’s plump ones.

The younger man opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came out.

“May I kiss you?” the game-keeper asked, his body taut with desire pressing against the quivering mass of lust that was Sherlock’s.

And it was then that the younger man realised he had not been kissed, really and fully, in a very long time. Moriarty had not relished it, Victor found it slightly unpleasant and his past ‘lovers’ had preferred the lewder acts.

He nodded frantically, parting his lips a bit and trying not to look like a gaping fish.

Watson was undeterred by this evident lack of experience. On the contrary, he gently pushed his tongue in, licking softy at Sherlock’s tongue until the younger man responded. They kept at it for a few moments, until the warm embers of desire had been fanned into a roaring fire. Watson had one hand buried in Sherlock’s curls and the other caressing down his back, as he devoured the younger man’s mouth with abandon.

Sherlock was going up in flames: every cell of his body was alive and drenched in lust; he wanted to respond in kind but found that his shyness only spurred the man on, whipping him into a frenzy of passion. But unlike Moriarty, there was no anger or violence in him; on the contrary, his strong hands enclosed Sherlock in a protective embrace, where he felt safe and cherished.

When they parted for breath, Sherlock realised he was extremely aroused and that was the moment the spell broke.

The game-keeper’s flushed face glazed over with a sort of hardness.

“You had a message,” he said, and Sherlock felt his chest constrict and his eyes fill with tears, but he forced himself to speak and convey his husband’s orders.

“Very good, your Lordship. I will see to it at once,” Watson replied.

Sherlock hesitated, he ought to go. He looked at the man with dismay, waiting for an explanation, but none came.

 “I hope I didn't disturb you?” he said, his voice shaking.

A warm smile lit up the older man’s eyes and tenderness returned into his tone.

“You are always welcome, your Lordship,” he said sweetly, with no hint of sarcasm.

He went in front of Sherlock down the garden path to hold the gate. In his shirt, without the clumsy velvet coat, Sherlock saw again how muscled and strong he was. There was something young and bright in his fair hair, and his quick eyes. He would be a man about thirty-seven or eight.

Sherlock plodded on into the wood, knowing the man was looking after him; it excited him, despite what had happened after the kiss.

And the game-keeper, as he went indoors, was thinking: “He's magnificent! Stunning, and he doesn’t even know it. Only needs feeding up a bit. Dangerous, but worth it. Worth losing one’s mind and life over.”

 

Sherlock wondered very much about John – as he’d started to call Watson in his mind and heart - he seemed so unlike a game-keeper, so unlike a working-man anyhow; although he had something in common with the local people. But also something very uncommon.

“The game-keeper is a curious kind of person,” he said to Victor; “he might almost be a gentleman.”

“Might he?” said Victor. “I hadn't noticed.”

“But isn't there something special about him?” Sherlock insisted.

“I think he's quite a nice fellow, but I know very little about him. He only came out of the army last year, less than a year ago. From India, I rather think. He may have picked up certain tricks out there, perhaps he was an officer's servant, and improved on his position. Some of the men were like that. But it does them no good, they have to fall back into their old places when they get home again.”

Sherlock gazed at Victor with barely concealed distaste. He saw in him the narrow-minded rebuff against anyone of the lower classes who might be really climbing up, which he knew was characteristic of his breed.

“But don't you think there is something special about him?” he said again.

“Frankly, no! Nothing I had noticed.”

Victor looked at his husband curiously, uneasily, half-suspiciously. And Sherlock felt he wasn't telling the real truth; he wasn't telling himself the real truth, that was it. He disliked any suggestion of a really exceptional human being. People must be more or less at his level, or below it.

But Sherlock wouldn’t be convinced; he knew there was something singular and mysterious about John, and he wouldn’t stop until he found out what it was.


	7. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The course of true love never did run smooth.  
> Mind the explicit tags from the very start of the chapter
> 
> Note: John's Well is really in the novel. I know.

When Sherlock went up to his bedroom that night, he did what he had not done for a long time: took off all his clothes, and inspected himself naked in the huge mirror. He did not know what he was looking for, or at, very definitely, yet he moved the lamp till it shone full on him.

And he thought, as he had thought so often, what a jumble of oddly assembled features his face was: his eyes were too far apart, his lips too feminine and his cheekbones too prominent. His face was long and slightly horsey and his complexion was pale, dotted here and there with unbecoming freckles. The lack of facial hair had stopped bothering him, but it made him seem far younger than he was.

He bit down on his lower lip until it was red and swollen as he imagined it had been that afternoon after John’s kiss.  The game-keeper had called him beautiful, he pondered. There had been a greedy look in his eyes as he said so, as if Sherlock had been some form of sustenance he’d lacked till then and that he wanted more of.

His neck was another of gripes: sure it was elegant, but like his lips it belonged on a woman’s body. Besides, it too was dotted with freckles and far too white to be considered attractive. But John had elected it as the first patch of Sherlock’s skin he had wanted to taste. Sherlock threw his head back and curled his long fingers around it, squeezing a little, imagining it was a smaller, stronger hand instead; a low moan escaped his lips and his eyes fell shut. A sluggish pulse of arousal was coursing through his veins, causing a flush to spread from his abdomen to his chest and throat.

When at length he reopened his eyes, he surveyed his torso critically, and the heat dissipated as he noticed his ribs sticking out and the hairless, translucent stretch of skin; thankfully, he was naturally lithe and sinewy, otherwise he’d have looked as green and unformed as an adolescent. He grimaced, as he couldn’t see what pleasure a strong, experienced man could take from his twig-like body. John had been married to a woman, all buttery curves and tender valleys, and here was Sherlock, who was – as Mycroft had remarked – only skin and bones.   

What made it even worse, was his height: he was taller than average, with long, ballet-dancer’s legs. Between them, in shocking contrast to the paleness of his thighs, was the ink-black thatch of curly pubic hair from which sprang a long, slender penis, pink as his lips. His testicles were larger than average, and with the thin phallus they made for a combination that Sherlock found aesthetically displeasing.

He looked in the other mirror's reflection at his shoulders, his back, his bottom. He was getting thinner there too, and to him it was not becoming. Still he thought the most beautiful part of him was the long-sloping fall of the loins from the socket of the back, and the slumberous, round stillness of the buttocks. Like hillocks of sand, the Arabs say, soft and downward-slipping with a long slope. Here the life still lingered hoping. He remembered those long gone Parisian days and nights, when he had been taken repeatedly, had been filled to the brim with another man’s desire.

He reached round with his hand and slowly, eased a finger between his buttocks until the tip touched the furled ring of his most secret place. At that moment, there was nothing he wanted more than feel John’s body on his, holding him tight from behind, his skilful fingers teasing Sherlock’s small, sensitive nipples and sliding down, till they’d tangle in his sodden curls.

And there was another rub! From what little comparative experience he had – and after all even the Parisian men he’d consorted with had been mostly intoxicated and their lovemaking far from thorough – Sherlock had never met anyone who was as plentiful in his emissions. When aroused, his penis wept copiously and when he spent, it was always in abundance and at times, embarrassingly so.

Both his husband and Moriarty found it unpleasant and he had been too high to notice how his other lovers had felt about it.

What if John was revolted by it? Naturally, he could try to keep his clothes on, but instinctively he knew that the game-keeper wouldn’t be waylaid.

But what if he liked it, loved it, instead?  Oh, the bliss of it!

He shut his eyes again; his hand closed around his shaft and stroked it slowly into full hardness. In the darkness, he could pretend it was John’s fist he was pushing into.

Finally, his knees buckled and he climaxed with a strangled whimper, sitting on his shins on the cold, hardwood floor. Ropes of semen had painted the mirror, and were trickling down into the ornate brass frame.

He cleaned the mess with an old pillowcase, slipped into his dressing gown, and lay down on the bed, silent and motionless. And in his bitterness burned a cold indignation against Victor, and his writings and his talk: against all the men of his sort who wouldn’t, couldn’t know another person intimately. The sense of deep physical injustice burned to his very soul.

 

The following Sunday, Mrs Donovan drove up in a cab to Fansworth with two trunks. Sally Donovan was a young widow, merely thirty-two, whose husband, Ted Donovan, had been killed in the pit. They had been a kid, but he had died soon after her birth.

Ted Donovan was twenty-eight when he was killed in an explosion down the pit. At the inquiry, on the masters' side they said Ted had been frightened, and trying to run away, and not obeying orders, so it was like his fault really. So the compensation was only three hundred pounds, and they made out as if it was more of a gift than legal compensation, because it was really the man's own fault. They wouldn't let her have the money down; she wanted to have a little shop. But they said she'd no doubt squander it, perhaps in drink, they said. So she had to draw it thirty shillings a week.  In the end, she’d qualified as a nurse and been employed at Sheffield hospital ever since. But now her mother was unwell, so she needed a position nearer Tevershall.

“Yes, the Company's been very good to _me,_ I always say it. But I should never forget what they said about Ted, for he was as steady and fearless a chap as ever set foot on the cage, and it was as good as branding him a coward. But there, he was dead, and could say nothing to none of 'em.”

It was a queer mixture of feelings the woman showed as she talked. She loved to gossip, in fact knew most things about the colliers and their lives. But the upper classes fascinated her, appealing to her peculiar English passion for superiority. She was thrilled to come to Fansworth; thrilled to talk to Lord Sherlock, my word, so different from the common colliers' lot! She said that in so many words. Yet one could see a grudge against the Trevors peep out; the grudge against the masters.

“Why, yes, of course, it would wear his Lordship out! It's a mercy his brother came down and sorted them out. But it's very hard for Sir Victor, you know, crippled like that. They were always a haughty family, standoffish in a way, as they've a right to be. But then to be brought down like that! And it's very hard on his Lordship, perhaps harder on him. What he misses! I only had Ted three years, but my word, while I had him I had a husband I could never forget. He was my first and only love; he was one in a thousand, and jolly as the day. Who'd ever have thought he'd get killed? I don't believe it to this day somehow, I've never believed it, though I washed him with my own hands. But he was never dead for me, he never will be,” she prattled.

This was a new voice in Fansworth, very new for Sherlock to hear; it roused a new ear in him. The idea that married love could be that steadfast, not merely a communion of minds, but of flesh and soul too, was a welcome one. The flesh never seemed to matter much in such unions, unless it was for childbearing purposes.

For the first week or so, Mrs Donovan, however, was very quiet at Fansworth, her assured, bossy manner left her, and she was nervous. With Victor she was shy, almost frightened, and silent. He liked that, and soon recovered his self-possession, letting her do things for him without even noticing his.

And he soon became rather superb, somewhat lordly with the nurse. She had rather expected it, and she played up without knowing. Victor made her feel small, and like a servant, and she accepted it without a word, adjusting herself to the upper classes.

She came, very mute, with her long, handsome face, and downcast eyes, to administer to him. And she said very humbly: “Shall I do this now, Sir Victor? Shall I do that?”

Mrs Donovan helped Victor to bed at night, and slept across the passage from his room, and came if he rang for her in the night. She also helped him in the morning, and soon valeted him completely, even shaving him, in her soft, tentative woman's way. She was very good and competent, and she soon knew how to have him in his power. He wasn't so very different from the colliers after all, when you lathered his chin, and softly rubbed the bristles. The stand-offishness and the lack of frankness didn't bother her; she was having a new experience.

Victor, however, inside himself, never quite forgave Sherlock for giving up his personal care of him to a strange hired woman. It killed, he said, the real flower of the intimacy between them. But Sherlock didn't mind that. The fine flower of their intimacy was to him rather like an orchid, a bulb stuck parasitic on his tree of life, and producing, to his eyes, a rather shabby flower.

Now Sherlock had more time to himself, he had started to play the violin again, up in his room, and he lost himself in his dreams.  

When Victor was alone he tapped-tapped-tapped on a typewriter, to infinity. But when he was not 'working', and Sherlock was there, he talked, always talked; infinite small analysis of people and motives, and results, characters and personalities, but now Sherlock had had enough. For years he had loved it, until suddenly it was too much. He was thankful to be alone.

It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of consciousness had grown together into a tangled mass, till they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly, subtly, he was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness, breaking the threads gently, one by one, with patience and impatience to get clear. And Sherlock felt he’d been released, in another world: he breathed freer: a new phase was going to begin in his life.

Mrs Donovan also kept a cherishing eye on Sherlock, feeling she must extend to him her professional protection. She was always urging his Lordship to walk out, to be in the air and Sherlock was ready to oblige.

 

One afternoon he went to the wood; he followed the path that swerved round and up through the larches to a spring called, bizarrely, John's Well. It was cold on this hillside, and not a flower in the darkness of larches. But the icy little spring softly pressed upwards from its tiny well-bed of pure, reddish-white pebbles. How icy and clear it was! Brilliant! The new keeper had no doubt put in fresh pebbles. He heard the faint tinkle of water, as the tiny overflow trickled over and downhill. Even above the hissing boom of the larch wood, that spread its bristling, leafless, wolfish darkness on the down-slope, he heard the tinkle as of tiny water-bells.

As he went he heard a faint tapping away on the right, and stood still to listen. Was it hammering, or a woodpecker? It was surely hammering.

He walked on, listening. And then he noticed a narrow track between young fir-trees, a track that seemed to lead nowhere. He followed it, until the hammering grew nearer, in the silence of the windy wood, for trees make a silence even in their noise of wind.

He saw a secret little clearing where flowers grew and bees buzzed freely, and a secret little hut made of rustic poles. And he had never been here before! He realized it was the place where the pheasants were reared; the keeper in his shirt-sleeves was kneeling, hammering. The man lifted his face suddenly and saw Sherlock. He had a startled look in his eyes. It was like the kiss they had exchanged had never happened.

He straightened himself and saluted, watching Sherlock in silence, as he came forward with weakening limbs. The younger man understood that the keeper resented the intrusion; he cherished his solitude as his only and last freedom in life.

“I wondered what the hammering was,” he said, feeling weak and breathless, and a little afraid of him, as he looked so straight into his eyes.

“I’m getting the coops ready for the birds,” Watson said, in his strong accent.

 “I should like to sit down a bit,” Sherlock murmured.

“Come and sit in the hut,” Watson said, going inside in front of the younger man, pushing aside some timber and stuff, and drawing out a rustic chair, made of hazel sticks.

“Shall I light you a fire?” he asked, looking down at Sherlock’s hands.

“Oh, don’t bother,” the younger man replied, embarrassed.

But Watson had seen that Sherlock’s hands were almost blue with cold and he quickly took some larch twigs to the little brick fire-place in the corner, and in a moment the yellow flame was running up the chimney.

The hut was quite cosy, panelled with unvarnished deal, having a little rustic table and stool beside him chair, and a carpenter's bench, then a big box, tools, new boards, nails; and many things hung from pegs: axe, hatchet, traps, things in sacks, the man’s coat. It had no windows; the light came in through the open door. It was a jumble, but also it was a sort of little sanctuary.

He made a place by the brick hearth.

“Sit here and warm yourself up,” he said, in a commanding tone.

Sherlock obeyed him. He had that curious kind of protective authority that one obeyed immediately.

The keeper was still looking down at Sherlock’s hands, with a questioning look in his eyes.

“Do you play the pianoforte?” he asked, after a while.

“The violin; I used to be rather good, but I stopped practising a long time ago,” he replied honestly.

“If it gives you pleasure, you shouldn’t stop. You have beautiful hands, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

There was a long silence, interrupted only by the crackling of the burning wood.

“The other day,” Sherlock started, but the keeper interrupted him.

“I forgot my place, your Lordship,” he said, unable to look the younger man in the eye. His hands fidgeted in his lap, like birds fluttering, wanting to fly away.

Once again, Sherlock was being rejected. His lips trembled a little and he had to still them with his fingers.

Watson intercepted the gesture and took hold of Sherlock’s hand, clasping it in both of his. Warm, strong, lovely hands, the younger man thought; hands that didn’t want him. They stayed like that, both breathless and a little flushed. Slowly, the keeper caressed the inside of Sherlock’s wrist, following the blue tracery of veins with the tip of the index finger. He softly massaged the base of each digit and, finally, bent down and placed an open-mouth kiss at the very centre of the velvety palm.

Sherlock exhaled loudly, and was about to respond, when the man suddenly stood up and left the hut.

 

John Watson was scared of love. He feared it, for he had a big wound from old contacts. He felt if he could not be alone, and if he could not be left alone, he would die. His recoil away from the outer world was complete; his last refuge was this wood; to hide himself there! And now Sherlock had found it, found him.

He knew the younger man had come out too, and was watching him fixedly.

As he glanced up at him quickly, he saw the sad look on that pale, beautiful face. To him it was a look of waiting. And a tongue of fire suddenly flickered in his loins, at the root of his back, and he groaned. He dreaded what was to come, and at the same time desired it more than anything he’d ever wanted.

Sherlock came to himself with sudden uneasiness. He went over to the man, who stood up at attention, his worn face stiff and blank and his stormy eyes devouring him.

“I think I shall come here again,” said Sherlock. “I could help you with the coops,” he added.

“Help?” the man repeated, with a flash of fury, touched with derision.

“Yes, why? I am not entirely useless,” he replied, coldly.

“As your Lordship wishes,” the keeper said, derisively.

Sherlock suddenly flushed with anger.

“Very well!” he exclaimed. “I’ll see you soon!”

“All right, your Lordship.”

Their eyes met. It was a look hot and cold, desperate and searching, wanting and not wanting.

Sherlock was unaware that he had awakened the sleeping dogs of old voracious hunger in him, almost against his will. And John Watson was powerless to resist them.


	8. The Flames of Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John get to know each other a bit better.  
> Oh, and Sherlock does a little hammering...

Sherlock found Mrs Donovan under the great beech-tree on the knoll, looking for him.

“I just wondered if you'd be coming, my Lord,” the woman said brightly.

“Am I late?” asked Sherlock, curtly.

“Oh no, only Sir Victor was waiting for his tea.”

“Why didn't you make it then?”

“Oh, I think it's hardly my place. I don't think Sir Victor would like it at all, my Lord.”

“I don't see why not,” countered Sherlock.

He went indoors to Victor's study, where the old brass kettle was simmering on the tray.

“Why didn't you let Mrs Donovan make the tea?”

“I didn't think of it,” he said ironically. “I don't quite see her presiding at the tea-table.”

“There's nothing sacrosanct about a silver tea-pot,” said Sherlock.

Victor glanced up at him curiously.

“What did you do all afternoon?” he asked.

“Walked and sat in a sheltered place. Do you think there is a second key to that little hut not far from John's Well, where the pheasants are reared?”

Sherlock asked, while pouring the tea.

“There may be. Why?”

“I happened to find it today--and I'd never seen it before. I could sit there sometimes, couldn't I?”

“Was Watson there?”

“That's how I found it: his hammering. He didn't seem to like my intruding at all. In fact he was almost rude.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, nothing: just his manner.”

“There may be one in Father's study. I'll get Mrs Donovan to look.”

“No, I will,' Sherlock stated and his husband threw him a perplexed look.

“So Watson was almost rude?”

“I don't think he wanted me to have the freedom of the castle, quite. I don't see why he should mind. It's not his home, after all! It's not his private abode. I don't see why I shouldn't be there if I want to,” Sherlock said, in a petulant tone.

“Quite!' said Victor, “he thinks too much of himself, that man.”

“Do you think he does?”

Sherlock was already regretting his little outburst. He didn’t mind criticising the game-keeper, but only if he were the only one to do it.

“He thinks he's something exceptional. You know he had a wife; when he didn’t want anymore, he joined up in 1915 and was sent to India, I believe. Anyhow he was blacksmith to the cavalry in Egypt for a time; always was connected with horses, a clever fellow that way. Then some Indian colonel took a fancy to him, and he was made a lieutenant. Yes, they gave him a commission. I believe he went back to India with his colonel, and up to the north-west frontier. He was shot and became very ill; he was given a pension. He didn't come out of the army till last year, I believe, and then, naturally, it isn't easy for a man like that to get back to his own level. He's bound to flounder. But he does his duty all right, as far as I'm concerned. Only I'm not having any of the Lieutenant Watson nonsense.”

“How could they make him an officer with that accent?”

“He can speak perfectly well, for him. I suppose he has an idea if he's come down to the ranks again, he'd better speak as the ranks speak.”

“What about his wife and child?”

“Oh, I've no patience with gossip, but for what it’s worth, rumour has it he left her because he prefers men.  She was perfectly lovely about the whole thing, and now lives with a simpleton named Anderson. The child is Anderson’s, but Watson gave her his name since he and his wife are still married.”

“Does Anderson work as a collier?”

“He does. But I have been told that he drinks. They all do, but he more than others.”

Sherlock imagined that Mrs Donovan had supplied his husband with all this information and that, despite pretending he didn’t care, Victor was gleefully enjoying it.

In the spell of fine weather Victor, too, decided to go to the wood. The wind was cold, but not so tiresome, and the sunshine was like life itself, warm and full.

The chair puffed on. In the hazel copse catkins were hanging pale gold, and in sunny places the wood-anemones were wide open, as if exclaiming with the joy of life, just as good as in past days, when people could exclaim along with them. They had a faint scent of apple-blossom. Victor looked at them curiously.

“Thou still unravished bride of quietness,” he quoted. “It seems to fit flowers so much better than Greek vases.”

“Ravished is such a horrid word!” Sherlock exclaimed. “It's only people who ravish things.”

“Oh, I don't know...snails and things,” Victor joked.

“Even snails only eat them, and bees don't ravish.”

For Sherlock had a passion for bees, and was toying with the idea of setting up a few beehives in the clearing near the hut.

But he was angry with Victor for turning everything into words. How he had started to hate words, always coming between him and life: they did the ravishing, if anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the life-sap out of living things.

The walk with Victor was not quite a success. Between him and Sherlock there was a tension that each pretended not to notice, but there it was. Suddenly, with all the force of his instinct, Sherlock was shoving him off. He wanted to be clear of him, and especially of his consciousness, his words, his obsession with himself, his endless treadmill obsession with himself, and his own words.

 

The weather turned rainy again. But after a day or two Sherlock went out in the rain, and he went to the wood. And once there, he went towards the hut. It was raining, but not so cold, and the wood felt so silent and remote, inaccessible in the dusk of rain.

He came to the clearing. No one there! The hut was locked. But he sat on the log doorstep, under the rustic porch, and snuggled into his own warmth.

Perhaps this was one of the unravished places. Unravished! The whole world was ravished. Ravished! How ravished could one be without ever being touched? Ravished by dead words become obscene, and dead ideas become obsessions.

The rain was abating and the sun had started to shine. Sherlock wanted to go; yet he sat on. But he was getting cold; yet the overwhelming inertia of his inner resentment kept him there as if paralysed.

A wet brown dog came running and did not bark, lifting a wet feather of a tail. The man followed in a wet black oilskin jacket, like a chauffeur, and face flushed a little. He felt him recoil in his quick walk, when he saw Sherlock. The younger man stood up in the hand-breadth of dryness under the rustic porch. Watson saluted without speaking, coming slowly near. Sherlock stood his ground: he wouldn’t be deterred so easily.

“Were you waiting to get in?” Watson asked, looking at the hut, not at him.

“No, I only sat here for a bit. I could help you now, if you mean to work at the coops again. Now that the sun is shining,” Sherlock said, determined to do just that.

Watson stared at his clothes, at his hands and up, at his face. His expression had something ferocious and resigned in it. He suddenly looked old, defeated.

“I just want to help, please. I know how to use a hammer and I need some employment. Show me what to do and I will do it.”

Watson glanced meaningfully at Sherlock’s elegant, white hands.

“You’ll spoil your hands. Hands such as yours are not made for hammers and shovels,” he declared, with an ironic smile on his expressive lips.

“I am tired of being told what I am good or not good for. I am a grown man and I can make up my own mind,” Sherlock pouted, and the keeper’s face glimmered with wicked laughter.

“I see that, your Lordship. Very well, you’re the master, you can turn me off at a week’s notice.”

“I don’t want to trouble you. And you’re Sir Victor’s keeper, not mine.”

The phrase sounded queer, he didn't know why. Watson eyes clouded over and his lips tightened, but he nodded curtly and strode towards the hut to collect the utensils.

 

Sherlock had never held a hammer in his hands before, not even in jest.

Not that he minded the effort involved, but he was getting exceedingly hot.

He removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, dabbing at his neck and brow with his silk pocket scarf.

Watson was a few steps away, cutting the wood down to the right size for the next coop. Sherlock pretended not to feel the man’s gaze on his back, but in the end he couldn’t resist and turned around.

From the initial direction of his gaze, Sherlock understood that the man had been staring at the back of his neck, where his sweaty curls curved just over the collar of his shirt. He was unashamed at having been caught in the act. In fact, he glanced with something like ravenous hunger at the sliver of skin showing between the straining buttons of Sherlock's now humid shirt.

The younger man found himself unable to either breathe or move, and it was Watson who cleared his throat impatiently and went back to his task.

Sherlock’s anger – with himself for being so passive and with the man for his annoying self-control – resolved itself in a veritable tempest of blows, whereby a splinter of wood shot off like a missile and lodged itself in the tender skin of his inner forearm, near the wrist.

“Ouch,” he cried out, and let the hammer fall to the ground, as he tried to remove the offending fragment of wood.

“Let me,” Watson said; he had run to Sherlock and was holding his wrist firmly, as he inspected the wound. His deft fingers prised the wood away with one well-practised motion after which he pressed down on the open cut, to minimise the bleeding.

“It’s nothing,” Sherlock whispered, raising his arm toward his lips and licking the blood off.

“Come inside the hut. That needs disinfecting,” the keeper said, roughly. He placed a protective hand on the small of Sherlock’s back and led him through. Once inside, he made him sit in the same spot by the hearth where he’d sat the previous time.

There was no fire this time, but Sherlock felt as flushed as if he’d been facing the flames of hell.

Watson cleaned his hands as best he could, opened a tin box and plucked a white cotton bandage, a spotless rag and a bottle of spirit from it. He knelt by Sherlock and started to clean his wound.

“This may sting,” he warned.

“I’m not a child…ouch!”

Watson grinned and looked up at Sherlock to say something, but stopped in his tracks, his gaze caught by the younger man’s mouth.

“You have blood on your lips,” he whispered, his voice ragged.

“Oh,” was the reply, as his tongue peeped out to lick at his lower lip.

At the same time, Watson had reached out with his free hand to brush at the same spot with his thumb. What happened then was that Sherlock’s tongue lapped at the tip of a salty-tasting finger. The keeper moaned at the sensation of wetness and for a moment Sherlock couldn’t feel anything apart from the rush of blood to his head. When he came back to his senses, the finger was still there, so he pressed his lips around it, suckling it timidly and then more boldly, as his tongue teased its underside.

“Oh, Christ,” the keeper moaned, as he let the rag drop and sank his fingers in Sherlock’s curls to pull him down for a kiss. It was as glorious as the first one had been. The man licked inside Sherlock’s mouth, seemingly determined to lap at any remaining drop of blood, feasting on the younger man’s tongue like it was the best food he’d ever tasted.

His instincts were perfectly in tune with Sherlock’s desires: he had one hand tugging at his long curls and the other curved around the pale neck, stroking the hollow of the younger man’s throat with a rough thumb.

As quickly as it had started, so it stopped, and once again Sherlock was confronted with a hardened expression, an almost reproachful glare.

“You are still bleeding, my Lord,” he said, and despite his breathy tone, he was pretending again as if nothing had occurred just then.

“Why do you do this? Turn cold after you’ve been so… willing?”

Sherlock immediately knew he’d used the wrong word.

“Willing? Aye, I’m willing alright, your Lordship. Here at your command! Does your Lordship want occupation? Or perhaps a slap’n’tickle from a servant to fend off the boredom? You are all the same, you masters. You take, take, take and expects us to give with a smile on our stupid, simpering faces!”

The keeper’s eyes were flashing with anger and disgust, but Sherlock wouldn’t be cowed this time; he wouldn’t be called a horrid snob, when he cared nothing for titles and class distinction.

“Perhaps you’ve been treated badly in the past, but that doesn’t give you the right to presume I am cut from the same cloth as those who offended you. You are a man and I am a man: there’s no distinction, other than what nature made. If you dislike my company then say so. But do not put words in my mouth or thoughts in my head that do not belong there,” he exploded. He’d stood up to say his piece, and was about to run out of the hut, when the man stopped him.

“Your Lordship is maybe right,” he said, placing a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, “But also young and inexperienced, if you allow me to say so. There’s many who would recoil in horror seeing what we just did, and I am not talking only about Sir Victor. Many a wagging tongue in the village that can do serious damage.”

“You’re worried about your wife finding out,” Sherlock said, unable to keep the scorn out of his voice.

“My wife knows what I’m like, I never lied to her,” Watson replied, unblinking in his sincerity.

“You married her.”

“Yeah, that I did. It’s a long story.”

“I have time.”

“But I have not, you see? I have to get back to work. Here, let me bandage that cut.”

They had both calmed down by then, and Sherlock accepted to sit back and let the man minister to his wound.

“You have done that before,” he said, as he watched the skilled fingers at work.

“I was in the army.”

“But you enjoy it; you like taking care of the sick,” Sherlock insisted, and the man smiled wickedly.

“You’re far from sick. Stubborn like a mule, but healthy; although, you could stand with fattening up a little,” he joked.

“I’m not a mule! And I know I am too thin, and I am not a woman, so I guess that is why you draw away from me every time,” Sherlock blurted out, a bit tearful with disappointment.

Watson let his gaze caress up and down Sherlock’s body before whispering in his ear: “You are like a dream come true; if I had my way, there wouldn’t be an inch of you left untouched.”

“Why then?” Sherlock croaked.

“Because you are who you are and I am who I am, your Lordship. Life has already dealt me more than my fair share of blows, and I need time to accept my fate.”

“What fate?”

“The disaster that will befall me when I lose myself in you, my Lord,” he replied, his voice so low and dark it licked at Sherlock’s insides, setting them on fire.

“And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work,” and like that, he was gone.

Sherlock went away completely bewildered. He was not sure whether he had been insulted and mortally offended, or been the recipient of the most heartfelt of love declarations.

He went home in confusion, not knowing who he was anymore.


	9. First Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sexy times ahead.

_“And then my blood rushed to my face_

_And took my eyesight quite away,_

_The trees and bushes round the place_

_Seemed midnight at noonday._

_I could not see a single thing,_

_Words from my eyes did start—_

_They spoke as chords do from the string,_

_And blood burnt round my heart.”_

_First Love – John Clare_

 

* * *

 

Sherlock was surprised at his own feeling of aversion for Victor. What is more, he felt he had always really disliked him. Not hate: there was no passion in it. But a profound physical dislike. Almost, it seemed to him, he had married Victor because he disliked him, in a secret, physical sort of way. But of course, he had married him really because in a mental way Victor had attracted him. He had seemed, in some way, his master, beyond him.

Now the mental excitement had worn itself out and collapsed, and he was aware only of the physical aversion. It rose up in him from his depths: and he realized how it had been eating his life away.

He felt weak and utterly forlorn.

All that writing! All that wild struggling to push himself forwards! It was just insanity. And it was getting worse, really maniacal.

Sherlock felt washed-out with fear. But at least, Victor was shifting his grip from him on to Mrs Donovan. He did not know it. Like many insane people, his insanity might be measured by the things he was _not_ aware of the great desert tracts in his consciousness.

Mrs Donovan was admirable in many ways. She _thought_ he was utterly subservient and living for others. Victor fascinated her because he always, or so often, frustrated her will, as if by a finer instinct. He had a finer, subtler will of self-assertion than herself. This was his charm for her.

Perhaps that had been his charm, too, for Sherlock.

“Shall I shave you this morning, or would you rather do it yourself?” Always the same soft, caressive, subservient, yet managing voice.

“I don't know. Do you mind waiting a while. I'll ring when I'm ready.”

“Very good, Sir Victor!” she replied, so soft and submissive, withdrawing quietly. But every rebuff stored up new energy of will in her.

When he rang, after a time, she would appear at once. And then he would say:

“I think I'd rather you shaved me this morning.”

Her heart gave a little thrill, and she replied with extra softness:

“Very good, Sir Victor!”

She was very deft, with a soft, lingering touch, a little slow. At first he had resented the infinitely soft touch of her fingers on his face. But now he liked it, with a growing voluptuousness. He let her shave him nearly every day: her face near his, her eyes so very concentrated, watching that he did it right. And gradually her fingertips knew his cheeks and lips, his jaw and chin and throat perfectly. He was well-fed and well-liking, his face and throat were handsome enough and he was a gentleman.

She was handsome too, pale, her face rather long and absolutely still, her eyes bright, but revealing nothing. Gradually, with infinite softness, almost with love, she was getting him by the throat, and he was yielding to her.

She now did almost everything for him, and he felt more at home with her, less ashamed of accepting her menial offices, than with Sherlock. She liked handling him. At first Mrs Donovan had thought there really was something different in a gentleman, a _real_ gentleman, like Sir Victor. So Victor had got a good start of her. But gradually, as she came to the bottom of him, to use her own term, she found he was like the rest, a baby grown to man's proportions: but a baby with a queer temper and a fine manner and power in its control, and all sorts of odd knowledge that she had never dreamed of, with which he could still bully her.

Sherlock was sometimes tempted to say to him:

“For God's sake, don't sink so horribly into the hands of that woman!” But he found he didn't care for Victor enough to say it, in the long run.

Sherlock had suggested to Mrs Donovan that she should learn to use a typewriter to type Victor’s manuscripts. And Mrs Donovan, always ready, had begun at once, and practised assiduously. So now Victor would sometimes dictate a letter to her, and she would take it down rather slowly, but correctly. And he was very patient, spelling for her the difficult words, or the occasional phrases in French. She was so thrilled, it was almost a pleasure to instruct her.

Yes, he was educating her. And he enjoyed it, it gave him a sense of power. And she was thrilled. She was coming bit by bit into possession of all that the gentry knew, all that made them upper class: apart from the money. That thrilled her. And at the same time, she was making him want to have her there with him. It was a subtle deep flattery to him, a genuine thrill.

Sally Donovan's tricks and humble bossiness were also only too transparent for Sherlock. But he did wonder at the genuine thrill which the woman got out of Victor. To say she was in love with him would be putting it wrongly. She was thrilled by her contact with a man of the upper class, this titled gentleman, this author who could write books and poems, and whose photograph appeared in the illustrated newspapers. She was thrilled to a weird passion. And his 'educating' her roused in him a passion of excitement and response much deeper than any love affair could have done. In truth, the very fact that there could _be_ no love affair left him free to thrill to his very marrow with this other passion, the peculiar passion of _knowing_ , knowing as he knew.

There was no mistake that the woman was in some way in love with Victor: whatever force we give to the word love. She looked so handsome and so young, and her brown eyes were sometimes marvellous. At the same time, there was a lurking soft satisfaction about her, even of triumph, and private satisfaction. No wonder Victor was caught by the woman! She absolutely adored him, in her persistent fashion, and put herself absolutely at his service, for him to use as he liked. No wonder he was flattered!

Sherlock heard long conversations going on between the two. Or rather, it was mostly Mrs Donovan talking. She had unloosed to him the stream of gossip about Tevershall village. It was more than gossip. It was Mrs Gaskell and George Eliot and Miss Mitford all rolled in one, with a great deal more, that these women left out.

Once started, Mrs Donovan was better than any book, about the lives of the people. She knew them all so intimately, and had such a peculiar zest in all their affairs, it was wonderful to listen to her. At first she had not ventured to 'talk Tevershall', as she called it, to Victor. But once started, it went on. Victor was listening for 'material', and he found it in plenty. Sherlock realized that his so-called genius was just this: a perspicuous talent for personal gossip, clever and apparently detached. Mrs Donovan, of course, was very warm when she 'talked Tevershall'. And it was marvellous, the things that happened and that she knew about. She would have run to dozens of volumes.

Sherlock was fascinated, listening with queer rabid curiosity.

Mrs Donovan's gossip was always on the side of the angels. “And he was such a _bad_ fellow, and she was such a _nice_ woman.”

Nevertheless, one got a new vision of Tevershall village from Mrs Donovan's talk. A terrible, seething welter of ugly life it seemed: not at all the flat drabness it looked from outside. Victor of course knew by sight most of the people mentioned, Sherlock knew only one or two. But one time, his attention was caught, as a well-known name was mentioned.

“There’s that lovely Mary Watson, trying to keep her head down and bring that child up, but that fellow of hers is always down the pub, drinking. One wonders where he finds the money. He’s not a bad fellow, doesn’t beat her up or anything, but he talks a lot, likes to boast, if you know what I mean. Not one to go for these Bolshevist ideas much, more likely to do stupid things for money, bets and the like.”

“What does her husband think of it?” Sherlock asked.

Mrs Donovan glanced at Victor as if asking for his permission to reply.

“They live completely separate lives, but there’s talk he still pays for the girl, even though she… isn’t a Watson, or so they say, my Lord. It’s very good of him, but he was always sweet on Mary. That is why it was such a shock when he left her and went off to India.”

“A shock… to whom?”

“That entire village, and she, that poor girl… she cried her eyes out when he left. Thank God, Phil Anderson had always been pining after her, so he jumped at the chance.”

Sherlock wanted to ask more questions, but he didn’t want to do that in front of Victor, so he dropped the subject and let her get on with her gossip.

He wondered why John had married a woman if he knew his inclination veered towards his own sex, and he also asked himself who was giving Anderson the money. If Mrs Donovan didn’t know, chances were there was a secret to be unveiled.

 

Under Mrs Donovan's influence, Victor began to take a new interest in the mines. He began to feel he belonged. A new sort of self-assertion came into him. After all, he was the real boss in Tevershall, he was really the pits. It was a new sense of power, something he had till now shrunk from with dread.

Tevershall pits were running thin. There were only two collieries: Tevershall itself, and New London. Tevershall had once been a famous mine, and had made famous money. But its best days were over. New London was never very rich, and in ordinary times just got along decently. But now times were bad, and it was pits like New London that got left.

It was Mrs Donovan's talk that really put a new fight into Victor. His income was secure, from his father's trust, even though it was not large. The pits did not really concern him. It was the other world he wanted to capture, the world of literature and fame; the popular world, not the working world.

Now he realized the distinction between popular success and working success: the populace of pleasure and the populace of work. He, as a private individual, had been catering with his stories for the populace of pleasure. And he had caught on. But beneath the populace of pleasure lay the populace of work, grim, grimy, and rather terrible. They too had to have their providers. And it was a much grimmer business, providing for the populace of work, than for the populace of pleasure. While he was doing he stories, and 'getting on' in the world, Tevershall was going to the wall.

Under Mrs Donovan's influence, Victor was tempted to enter this other fight, to capture the bitch-goddess by brute means of industrial production. Somehow, he got his pecker up.

In one way, Mrs Donovan made a man of him, as Sherlock never did. Sherlock kept him apart, and made him sensitive and conscious of himself and his own states. Mrs Donovan made him aware only of outside things. Inwardly, he began to go soft as pulp. But outwardly he began to be effective.

He even roused himself to go to the mines once more: and when he was there, he went down in a tub, and in a tub he was hauled out into the workings.

He seemed verily to be re-born. _Now_ life came into him! He had been gradually dying, with Sherlock, in the isolated private life of the artist and the conscious being. Now he let all that go. Let it sleep. He simply felt life rush into him out of the coal, out of the pit. The very stale air of the colliery was better than oxygen to him. It gave him a sense of power, power. He was doing something: and he was _going_ to do something. He was going to win, to win: not as he had won with he stories, mere publicity, amid a whole sapping of energy and malice. But a man's victory.

He was not aware how much Mrs Donovan was behind him. He did not know how much he depended on her. But for all that, it was evident that when he was with her, his voice dropped to an easy rhythm of intimacy, almost a trifle vulgar.

With Sherlock, he was a little stiff.  Only when he was alone with Mrs Donovan did he really feel a lord and a master, and he let her shave him or sponge all his body as if he were a child, really as if he were a child.

Sherlock was a good deal alone now, fewer people came to Fansworth. Victor no longer wanted them. He had turned against even the cronies. He was queer.

But now that he was drifting off to this other weirdness of industrial activity, becoming almost a _creature,_ Sherlock was really completely stranded.

He was not even free, for Victor must have him  there. He seemed to have a nervous terror that his husband should leave him. He must be there, there at Fansworth, otherwise he would be lost like an idiot on a moor.

This amazing dependence Sherlock realized with a sort of horror.

Victor had become a practical man himself and an amazingly astute and powerful one, a master.  But this astute and practical man was almost an idiot when left alone to his own emotional life. He worshipped Sherlock. All he wanted was for Sherlock to swear, to swear not to leave him, not to give him away.

Moreover, Sherlock would hear Victor talking to Mrs Donovan, in a hot, impulsive voice, revealing himself in a sort of passionless passion to the woman, as if he were half mistress, half foster-mother to him. And Mrs Donovan was carefully dressing him in evening clothes, for there were important business guests in the house.

Sherlock really sometimes felt he would die at this time. He felt he was being crushed to death by weird lies, and by the amazing cruelty of idiocy. There was nothing between them. Sherlock never even touched him nowadays, and he never touched Sherlock. They never even held hands anymore.

 

 

Sherlock fled as much as possible to the wood. One afternoon, when he went to the hut, he found two brown hens sitting alert and fierce in the coops, sitting on pheasants' eggs. He felt so forlorn and unused, just a mere thing of terrors.

Then, one day, all the live coops were occupied by hens, three brown and a grey and a black. With brilliant eyes they watched Sherlock, as he crouched before them, and they gave short sharp clucks of anger and alarm, but chiefly of anger at being approached.

Sherlock found corn in the corn-bin in the hut. He offered it to the hens in his hand. They would not eat it. Only one hen pecked at his hand with a fierce little jab, so Sherlock was frightened. But he was pining to give them something, the brooding mothers who neither fed themselves nor drank. He brought water in a little tin, and he was delighted when one of the hens drank.

In one of the coops there was one tiny, tiny perky chicken timidly prancing round in front of a coop, and the mother hen clucking in terror. Sherlock was fascinated. And at the same time, never had he felt so acutely the agony of his own solitude. It was becoming unbearable.

 

One evening, guests or no guests, he escaped after tea. It was late, and he fled across the park like one who fears to be called back. The sun was setting rosy as he entered the wood, but he pressed on among the flowers. The light would last long overhead.

He arrived at the clearing flushed and semi-conscious. The keeper was there, in his shirt-sleeves, just closing up the coops for the night, so the little occupants would be safe. But still one little trio was pattering about on tiny feet, under the straw shelter, refusing to be called in by the anxious mother.

“I had to come and see the chickens!” he said, panting, glancing at the keeper, almost unaware of him. “Are there any more?”

“Thirty-six so far!” he said. “Not bad!”

He too took a curious pleasure in watching the young things come out.

Sherlock crouched in front of the last coop. The three chicks had run in. But still their cheeky heads came poking sharply through the yellow feathers, then withdrawing, then only one beady little head eyeing forth from the vast mother-body.

“I'd love to touch them,” he said, putting his fingers gingerly through the bars of the coop. But the mother-hen pecked at his hand fiercely, and Sherlock drew back startled and frightened.

“She hates me!' he said in a hurt voice.

The man standing above him laughed, and crouched down beside him, knees apart, and put his hand with quiet confidence slowly into the coop. The old hen pecked at him, but not so savagely. And slowly, softly, with sure gentle fingers, he felt among the old bird's feathers and drew out a faintly-peeping chick in his closed hand.

“There!” he said, holding out his hand to Sherlock, who took the little drab thing between his hands, and there it stood, on its impossible little stalks of legs, its atom of balancing life trembling through its almost weightless feet into Sherlock's hands. “So adorable! So cheeky!” he said softly.

The keeper, squatting beside him, was also watching with an amused face the bold little bird in his hands. Suddenly, he saw a tear fall on to his wrist.

And he stood up, and stood away, moving to the other coop. For suddenly he was aware of the flame shooting and leaping up in his loins. He fought against it, turning his back to Sherlock. But it leapt, and leapt downwards, circling in his knees.

He turned again to look at Sherlock, kneeling as he was, holding the little chick in his two large, elegant hands. And there was something so forlorn in that sight, that passion flamed in his bowels.

Without knowing what he was doing, the keeper came quickly towards Sherlock and crouched beside him again, taking the chick from his hands, because he was afraid of the hen, and putting it back in the coop. At the back of his loins the fire suddenly darted stronger.

“You shouldn't cry,” he said, and put his hands on the younger man’s face, feeling that really his heart was exploding and nothing mattered any more.

He laid his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, and softly, gently, it began to travel down his back, with a blind stroking motion, to the curve of his buttocks.

“Come to the hut,' he said, hoarsely.

And closing his hand softly on his upper arm, he drew him up and led him slowly to the hut, not letting go of his till he was inside. Then he cleared aside the chair and table, and took a brown, soldier's blanket from the tool chest, spreading it slowly. He lit a candle and placed on the chair, and he shut the door, so that it was dark, quite dark.

“Lie down with me,” he whispered in Sherlock’s ear.

As if in a dream, the younger man found himself lying supine on the floor, while the keeper, John, was by his side, propped on one elbow, looking into his face with a sort of mad tenderness. The candlelight flickered and shadow danced on his face.

“You are so infinitely beautiful,” he whispered, as he caressed Sherlock’s face and neck.

“So are you,” the younger man replied, and that made John laugh.

“Not a short, vulgar fellow like me. You are an orchid and I am but a lowly blade of grass.”

Sherlock felt the man’s smile against his skin, as John bent down to kiss his cheek. This time he was ready for the kiss, but the keeper overlooked his lips and directed his attention to his jaw and his neck, licking and nipping along the way.

“Don’t you want to… kiss me…” Sherlock panted.

“I want everything, everything,” John replied, sucking at his Adam’s apple, “but your neck has been taunting me for days now and your buttons, here,” he undid one, “are like instruments of torture.” Quickly, he unbuttoned Sherlock’s shirt down to his navel and slid his hand inside with a groan that seemed to stem from his very soul.

“That you are soft,” he said, reverently, “like velvet, you are. God, what it is to touch you.”

Sherlock gave himself up for lost, but when John mouthed at his nipple, he cried out and arched his back, nearly dislodging his lover.

“Are you hurt?” the keeper asked, concerned.

“Oh again, more, please,” he whimpered and was immediately obeyed.

John licked his nipples, rolled them between his fingers and sucked them, alternating soft suckles, with hard pinches. He hummed and moaned as he did so, and Sherlock pulled the blond head closer, wanting to be devoured.

He was conscious of the wetness spreading from the tip of his erection, as it pressed uncomfortably against his buttoned underclothes and trousers.

John’s arousal was rubbing against Sherlock’s thigh, and the young man suddenly knew what he wanted, more than anything. He had wanted that for months, years and never had a lover who cared enough for him to allow him that supreme pleasure. But surely John was different, he hoped.

The keeper felt Sherlock’s change of mood, and for a moment misunderstood its cause, until he felt a large, elegant hand reach down to cup his erection, timidly but with clear intent.

“Oh, that it feels good, oh, yes,” John moaned, and Sherlock felt emboldened enough to whisper his most ardent desire.

“I want to bring you off with my mouth, if you’ll allow me,” he said, and felt John’s erection twitch against his palm.

“Jesus, yes, but are you sure it is what you want? I was about to do the same to you; have dreamt about it a few times; in fact, almost every night,” he replied, smiling, but then his eyes went dark like pools, “say it again, not like a gentleman this time.”

Sherlock’s heart beat like mad; he felt it in his throat, his reddened nipples, his swollen penis.

“I want to suck your cock until you spend inside my mouth,” he whispered, in his darkest tone.

And this time he was not prepared, as John surged up and kissed his mouth with toe-curling intensity.

“You will be the ruin of me, my Lord,” he said, against the bee-stung lips. Sherlock would have loved to take his time kissing and licking down John’s chest, and he vowed to himself he’d do that soon, but now there was one thing he needed more than breathing even.

With as much swiftness as his trembling fingers allowed he unbuttoned John’s trousers and undid his undergarments, and with the man’s help they were pulled down to his ankles, than shoved aside, together with shoes and socks.

Sherlock’s eyes watered a little as he was confronted by a thicker than average penis, not too long, with a bulbous, dark-red head already welling at the slit. It was so erect he had to use his hand to bring it closer to his mouth.

At the first lick of his tongue, John let out a pained cry, and buried his fingers in Sherlock’s curls.

“Pull them a little; I like that,” Sherlock said, and was rewarded with a soft tug. In reply, he took the cockhead into his mouth and suckled, feeling such a surge of pleasure in his testicles he knew he was going to climax just from the act.

John understood, and moved his leg closer for Sherlock to rub against.

“Let yourself go, take what you need,” John moaned, and the younger man felt finally liberated. He went down on the keeper’s shaft with lewd abandon, suckling and lapping, while he jerked his hips, pressing his clothed arousal against John’s muscled calf. The keeper didn’t force his head down, but he pulled his hair from time to time, and Sherlock sucked harder and faster, one hand cradling his lover’s sac.

John moaned louder and louder, until Sherlock felt his entire body jerk and then he was climaxing, hot and abundant, filling the younger man’s mouth. The bliss of it was so much that it caused his own release, and John, even though he was still shaking from his crisis, pulled him up and held him tight, whispering tender words in his ear.

They stayed in that embrace for a while, and it was John who broke the silence.

“I want to see you. It was remiss of me not to undress you completely,” he said, but Sherlock, now that the boldness of desire had subsided, was shy again of what he knew his other lovers had found disgusting.

He nodded briefly, and John gently unbuttoned and unlaced until he found his prize.

“Yes, yes,” he whispered, and without hesitation bent down and licked his lover clean. If he hadn’t spent so recently, Sherlock would have been aroused again.

“Don’t you dislike it?” he asked his lover.

John caressed his cheek with the back of his hand. “It’s the best part of love, the proof of your desire. If I disliked it, I wouldn’t be here with you, would I?”

And Sherlock couldn’t fault his logic, but wondered why it hadn’t applied to his other lovers.

After a while, he felt John withdraw from him, as if reality had finally intruded into their dream.

“Shall we go then?” John said.

“Where?”

“I'll go with you to the gate.”

“You aren't sorry, are you?” Sherlock asked, when they were outside.

“No,” John said, fiercely. Then after a while he added: “But there's the rest of things; Sir Victor. Other people. All the complications.'

“Why complications?” Sherlock said, disappointed.

“There's always complications. I thought I'd done with it all. Now I've begun again.”

“Begun what?”

“Life! There's no keeping clear. And if you do keep clear you might almost as well die. So if I've got to be broken open again, I have.”

They went on through the darkening wood in silence, till they were almost at the gate.

John kissed Sherlock softly, softly, with the kisses of warmth.

“If only there weren't so many other people in the world,” he said lugubriously, and they both laughed at that. They were at the gate to the park. John opened it. “I won't come any further,” he said.

Sherlock held out his hand to be shaken, but John took it in both of his.

“Do you want to see me again?” Sherlock asked.

“Yes! Yes!”

He left John there, and ran across the park.

 


	10. Mary Watson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More sexy times.  
> An old friend returns (when I say friend...) and enters Mary Watson.

John Watson stood back and watched Sherlock as he ran into the dark, against the pallor of the horizon. Almost with bitterness, he watched him go. The young man had connected him up again, when he had wanted to be withdrawn. He had cost him that bitter privacy of a man who at last wants only to be alone.

He turned into the dark of the wood. All was still, the moon had set. But he was aware of the noises of the night, the engines at Stacks Gate, the traffic on the main road. Slowly he climbed the denuded knoll. And from the top he could see the country, bright rows of lights at Stacks Gate, smaller lights at Tevershall pit, the yellow lights of Tevershall and lights everywhere, here and there, the rosiness of the outpouring of white-hot metal: sharp, wicked electric lights at Stacks Gate; an indefinable quick of evil in them.

He went down again into the darkness and seclusion of the wood. But he knew that seclusion was illusory. The industrial noises broke the solitude, the sharp lights, though unseen, mocked it. A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits. And now he had taken Sherlock, and brought on himself a new cycle of pain and doom. For he knew by experience what it meant.

It was not the young man’s fault, nor even love's fault, nor the fault of sex. The fault lay there, out there, in the world, where gentlemen like Sherlock were supposed to look through him as if he were invisible. Nature was different, of course. But nature was slowly being crushed by greed, an evil that destroyed whatever did not conform.

He thought with infinite tenderness of Sherlock, of how soft his skin was and how quick his pulse had been in his lovely neck. He was much too alive for the dead lot he was in contact with. If they only knew what he was like, they would try to change him, to destroy him too. John marvelled that they hadn’t succeeded yet, that Sherlock was still as precious and unique as a wildflower grown among rocks. Despite his shyness, John had perceived his passionate nature and his original mind, both kept trapped in the gilded cage of his empty life. They, his horrid class, had been trying to do him in! As sure as life, they would do him in, as they did with everything that did not conform. John would protect him with his life if he had to, but he feared it would not be enough. The outside world cared little or nothing for love and passion, he knew that only too well.

He went home with his gun and his dog, to the dark cottage, lit the lamp, started the fire, and ate his supper of bread and cheese, onions and beer. He was alone, in a silence he loved. His room was clean and tidy, but rather stark. Yet the fire was bright, the hearth white, the petroleum lamp hung bright over the table, with its white oil-cloth. He tried to read a book about India, but tonight he could not read. He sat by the fire in his shirt-sleeves, not smoking, but with a mug of beer in reach. And he thought about Sherlock.

To tell the truth, he was sorry for what had happened, perhaps most for the young man’s sake. He had a sense of foreboding. No sense of wrong or sin; he was troubled by no conscience in that respect. He was not afraid of himself, but he was afraid of society, which he knew to be a malevolent beast.

If Sherlock could be there with him, and there were nobody else in the world! The desire rose again, his penis began to stir like a live bird. Stretching with the curious yawn of desire, for he had been alone for four years, he rose and took his coat again, and his gun, lowered the lamp and went out into the starry night, with the dog. Driven by desire, he made his round in the wood, slowly, softly. He loved the darkness and folded himself into it. It fitted the intensity of his desire, the stirring restlessness of his penis, the lambent fire in his loins.

 

Sherlock, for his part, had hurried across the park, home, almost without thinking. He was too shocked to think.

He was annoyed to find the doors fastened, however, so that he had to ring. Mrs Donovan opened.

“Why, there you are, your Lordship! I was beginning to wonder if you'd gone lost!” she said a little roguishly. “Sir Victor hasn't asked for you, though; he's got Mr Moriarty in with him, talking over something. It looks as if he'd stay to dinner, doesn't it, my Lord?”

“What?” exclaimed Sherlock. What was the man doing here now?

“He’s only staying for dinner, on his way to do some business in Sheffield, so he said. Rather odd-looking fellow, if you pardon my saying so.”

“Yes, well, at least he’s not staying for the night,” Sherlock said, forgetting his manners for a moment.

Mrs Donovan smiled knowingly.

“Shall I put dinner back a quarter of an hour? That would give you time to dress in comfort.”

“Perhaps you'd better.”

 

Dinner went by as a sort of candle-lit daydream. Sherlock listened to Victor and Moriarty talk about their latest endeavours, but he couldn’t retain a single word that was said. The only thing that made an impression in his dazed, over-worked mind was how excited his husband was about his new industrialist persona and, by contrast, how still and malevolent the other man seemed. He couldn’t quite remember why he had found the man pleasant or why he’d ever felt sorry for him. It was evident Moriarty enjoyed his status of self-styled victim, that he relished and pursued it; that he used it to elicit attention and sympathy, to manipulate affections, the way he had done with Sherlock.

How different John Watson was! He may have rejected Sherlock at the start, but he had been honest as to his reasons and once he had opened up, he’d been generous and loving to a fault. Even Victor, with his vanity and his empty boastings, was at heart a good man compared to James Moriarty.

“You look well,” the Irishman said to Sherlock as the younger man accompanied him to the door. “Not as thin, not as depressed. Your eyes are sparkling. If I were writing a play about you, I would say this is the part of the story where the hero is falling in love. Would I be wrong?”

Sherlock tried to be impassive, but felt naked under the scrutiny of those dark, fathomless eyes. The man grinned slowly, his white teeth showing like the blade of a knife.

“Life here is always the same. Precious little changes at Fansworth,” Sherlock said, as nonchalantly as he could.

“Mrs Donovan is a shrewd woman. I bet she keeps Sir Victor occupied and gives you more freedom to… roam the countryside,” he said, with a malicious glint in his eyes.

“She told me about your business in Sheffield; a new lover perhaps?”

“Clever supposition, my Lord, but no, nothing that exciting! I am following a lead, a story that should make for quite an explosive new play.”

“More money for you, more success,” Sherlock sneered.

“Isn’t that what life is about?” Moriarty replied, his eyes as black and hard as gemstone. There’s no life in you, Sherlock thought.

“For some,” he replied and held the door open for the man to go out.

“Goodbye, Sherlock Holmes. Take care you don’t get too close to the fire. Your skin is much too soft to bear it.”

“Goodbye Mr Moriarty, my skin is my business and mine only. Have a safe trip!” Sherlock quipped, shutting the door with a loud bang.

 

He felt triumphant and alive, but once in his room, after the excitement had died down, he became vague and confused. He didn't know what to think. Why was Moriarty here? What did he know? Then he thought about John: what sort of a man was he, really? Did he really like Sherlock? Not much, perhaps. Yet he was kind. There was something, a sort of warm naive kindness, curious and sweet, that almost undid him. But he felt John might be kind like that to anyone. And he was a passionate man. But maybe Sherlock was only really a male to him.

But maybe that was better. And after all, he was kind to the male in him, which no man had ever been. Men were very kind to the _person_ he was, to his mind and status, but rather cruel to his inner self, despising him or ignoring him altogether. Men were awfully kind to Sherlock Holmes or to Lord Trevor; but not to his real nature they weren't kind. John Watson didn’t really care about Lord Trevor; he just softly stroked his skin and kissed his mouth.

 

He went to the wood next day. There was no one at the clearing. The chicks had nearly all gone under the mother-hens, only one or two last adventurous ones still dibbed about in the dryness under the straw roof shelter. And they were doubtful of themselves.

John still had not been. He was staying away on purpose. Or perhaps something was wrong. Perhaps Sherlock should go to the cottage and see. But what if John was avoiding him! He sat down to wait, just for a few moments.

Suddenly, the keeper came striding into the clearing, in his black oilskin jacket, shining with wet. He glanced quickly at the hut, half-saluted, then veered aside and went on to the coops. There he crouched in silence, looking carefully at everything, then carefully shutting the hens and chicks up safe against the night.

At last he came slowly towards Sherlock. He stood before him under the porch.

“You’ve come then,” he said, using the intonation of the dialect.

“I thought you wouldn’t come,” Sherlock said, looking up at him.

John looked away into the wood, and was silent.

“But what if somebody found out,” he asked at last. “Think about it! Think how lowered you'll feel, one of your husband's servants.”

Sherlock thought of Victor and of Moriarty and shivered. But then another thought came into his mind.

“Is it that you don't want me?”

“Think!” John repeated. “Think of what they will say to you and how ashamed you will be.”

Sherlock’s cheeks were flushed in anger.

“Well, I can go away.”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere! I've got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand pounds in trust, and I know Victor can't touch it. I can go away.”

“But you don't want to go away.'

“Yes, yes! I don't care what happens to me.”

“Aye, you think that! But you'll care! You'll have to care, everybody has. You've got to remember your Lordship is consorting with a game-keeper. It's not as if I was a gentleman. Yes, you'd care. You'd care,” he repeated, bitterly.

“I shouldn't. What do I care about my Lordship! I hate it really. I feel people are jeering every time they say it. And they are, they are! Even you jeer when you say it.”

“Me!”

For the first time John looked straight at him, and into his eyes. “I don't jeer at you,” he said.

As he looked into his eyes, Sherlock saw them go dark, quite dark, the pupils dilating.

“Don't you care about the risk?” John asked in a husky voice. “You should care. Don't care when it's too late!”

“I've nothing to lose. If you knew what it is, you'd think I'd be glad to lose it. But are you afraid for yourself?”

“I am afraid of the outside world, of what it could do to us.”

Then he bent down and suddenly kissed Sherlock’s frowning face.

“I don't care,” he said. “Let's have it, and damn the rest. But if you felt sorry you'd ever done it…”

“I never will,” Sherlock replied.

John put his fingers to his lover’s cheek and kissed him again suddenly.

“Let’s go in,” he said, softly.

Once inside, he hung up his gun, slipped out of his wet leather jacket, and reached for the blankets.

“I brought another blanket,” he said, “so we can put one over us if you like.”

He shut the door, and lit a tiny light in the hanging hurricane lamp. “One time we'll have a long time, all night even” he said.

He put the blankets down carefully, one folded for his head. This time he undressed completely before lying down and Sherlock did the same, with frantic determination to be skin to skin with his lover.

Sherlock heard the catch of the man’s breath as he looked down at his lover’s nude form. His eyes were dark and hungry as they caressed up and down the pale, slim body. For a moment he stood there, upright, glancing down. Sherlock saw the tightening of his jaw, the flaring of the nostrils and the heaving of his broad, slightly furry chest. At every breath, his erect penis jumped and seemed to stretch a little more towards Sherlock.

“Come here. Lay down on me, please,” the latter whispered.

John knelt down between Sherlock’s splayed legs and bent down to kiss his lover’s glans.

“Oh, oh, yes, oh,” the younger man moaned, and was about to warn John about something, but his mind was blank, and then there was a wet tongue licking him, lips suckling with merciless intent, drawing pleasure out of him so quickly he became dizzy.

But John didn’t let him finish, he wanted to see his face when he climaxed, wanted to see the madness of lust in his changeable eyes.

“You don’t,” Sherlock started, but was waylaid by the fist that closed around his sopped erection. “Oh, yes, yes,” he sobbed.

“I do, I do… this, and more, and everything, but this time, mm, I want us to come off together, yes?” he whispered against Sherlock’s neck, licking along the length of it, as his hand kept stroking and pumping.

“Oh god, god, god,” the younger man cried out, because John had gone ahead and now his thick and heavy arousal was rubbing against Sherlock's. The sensation was so intense his testicles started throbbing.

“Put your hand here, like this,” John panted, as he thumbed all over the cock-heads, smearing them with their liquid. “Yes, like this, oh god, oh, how good, mm, how good,” he repeated, his breath shallow and his body tense and shaking.

Sherlock was trembling too, and he was running hot and cold, his free hand clawing desperately at John’s arms, chest, back, wanting to touch every inch of skin.

John leaned down and kissed his lover’s sweaty brow, the hollow of his cheek, the tip of his nose.

They kept a frenzied rhythm: John was snapping his hips, pinning Sherlock to the floor, and the younger man pushed up, clenching his buttocks and tightening his abdomen. John’s hand was relentless, tight like steel around the shaft and teasing and clever on the sensitive head. He tried to do the same, and soon was rewarded with even more moans and cries from his lover.

Pleasure built up to an impossible pitch: Sherlock’s eyes rolled back into his head and his mouth opened to a wordless cry.

“Come on, now, yes, beautiful, look at me, come on,” John said, hoarsely, as he tried to kiss his lover’s mouth, not quite able to reach it. Sherlock looked down and sobbed: their cocks sliding together, the heads red and weeping, it was too much, too much.

“Oh god, oh, I’m coming, oh, god,” he screamed, and his lover responded by biting at his lips and massaging his sweet spot, and Sherlock couldn’t have stopped if death had come a-calling.

They didn’t come off together as John had wanted, but it was very close, merely a question of moments. Ropes of semen painted Sherlock’s chest and neck, some even landing on his lips and chin, his release mixing with John’s. As he lay back in a daze of satiation, he half-realised John was cleaning him up with a rag and his tongue, possibly wanting to make good on that promise to leave no part of Sherlock’s body untouched.

“You are a wonder,” John murmured, when they finally lay in each other’s arms.

“We are, together,” Sherlock replied, and words of love were clamouring to be said out loud. Still, he hesitated.

“It’s late,” John said after a while, and his voice seemed distant and cold.

“I should go,” was the forlorn reply.

John lifted himself, kneeled beside him a moment, kissed the inside of his lover’s thighs, his spent penis, his still-aching testicles, then reached for Sherlock’s clothes and helped him get dressed.

He then got up and put his own clothes back, in silence.

“Come then!” he said, looking down at Sherlock with his stormy, undecipherable eyes.

Sherlock rose slowly. He didn't want to go.

“It's a quarter past seven,” John said, “not too late.”

They walked in silence and as they turned the last bend in the riding towards the hazel wall and the gate, John blew out the light.

 “Kiss me,” Sherlock said, and bent over him, brushing his lips softly against the man’s mouth. “Goodnight,” he whispered.

“Goodnight, your Lordship.”

Sherlock stopped and looked into the man’s eyes, but it was too dark to see.

“Why did you say that?' he said, hurt.

But John didn’t reply, and plunged on in the dark-grey tangible night.

 

The next days Sherlock did not go to the wood.

He went instead with Victor and Mrs Donovan to the village. His husband was seeing the doctor for his monthly visit, but had requested the nurse to accompany him, so Sherlock was free to pursue his own plans.

He had vaguely asked Mrs Donovan about Mrs Watson and the shrewd woman had entrusted him with a poultice for the little Watson girl who frequently suffered from coughing fits, especially during the spring time.

Tevershall village was an even more depressing sight from up close than it was from a distance. The houses were huddled together and their façades were covered in soot.

The Watsons abode wasn’t an exception, but Sherlock noticed that the front step had been swept recently and the door handle was being kept well polished. Clearly Mary Watson was house-proud, he thought. When she opened the door, she looked up at Sherlock and blushed in confusion, evidently knowing the identity of her unexpected visitor.

“Lord Trevor, I wasn’t expecting a visit. Had anything happened to John?” she said, alarm showing in her large brown eyes.

“My husband’s nurse, Mrs Donovan, wanted you have this poultice for your little girl and seeing that I was in the neighbourhood,” he replied, and the woman timidly invited him in.

The sitting room was tiny, but clean and cosy: the stove’s fire was lit and a kettle was boiling on it. The teapot and cups were on the table, and next to them was a platter of scones with butter and jam.

“You were expecting guests,” Sherlock enquired.

“Mrs Donovan sent message, my Lord, but never said your Lordship would be inconvenienced. I would never have allowed it, had I known it,” she said, in the same broad accent as her husband. That link between them troubled Sherlock, even though he knew his annoyance was irrational.

Mary Watson was a small, curvy woman of thirty-odd years with a pretty heart-shaped face, and short blonde hair, who would have looked younger if it weren’t for the lines of worry on her forehead and around her mouth. She brewed the tea and served it to him with anxious eyes, her teeth worrying at her lower lip.

Sherlock had decided that his strategy would be to not have one: he would be as honest as possible, without revealing the nature of his relationship to the game-keeper.

“Mrs Watson,” he started.

“Call me Mary,” she interjected.

“Mary, I have heard from Mrs Donovan that you are worried about your… man, Mr Anderson. I would like to offer my help, if you’ll allow me. After all, my husband owns this land and it’s my duty as his spouse to make sure his tenants are not being harassed by any… third parties.”

“Why would you say that? Pardon my plain manner of speaking, my Lord, but why do you suspect ill will? Phil is a good man, but he’s been known to talk nonsense once or twice. You can’t believe half of what comes out of his mouth,” she said, shaking her head.

“Mrs Donovan mentioned someone may be paying for his ale and who would do that?”

Mary’s eyes opened wide, as if she had just seen an apparition.

“You don’t think John is doing that? Because he would never! You don’t have to listen to what them people say that hate him because of what he is. They don’t know him like I do! He’s a fine man, and I won’t have it said different!”

She suddenly fell silent, already ashamed of her little outburst. She had character, Sherlock thought, and even that dismayed him somewhat, as he had been meek and lacking mettle, in comparison.

“You must love him very much… still.”

“I do, he was always honest and kind with me.”

And now came the difficult part, the subject that was harder to broach.

“I have met him and he has very good… manners, unfit for such a lowly post as the one he’s occupying,” Sherlock stammered, and his embarrassment was unfeigned.

“He was always one for reading and studying, was John. He was even taking lessons to improve his accent and if it wasn’t for that evil young man,” she said angrily, before realising the gravity of what she’d let slip.

“You can tell me, I promise I will keep your secret,” he said, but she shook her head, a frightened expression in her eyes.

“He had a liaison with a young man and he was the reason John left for India,” Sherlock suggested.

Her eyes filled with tears. “John and I… he never lied to me. His heart had been broken, you see? By a gentleman such as you and he said to me he’d never love anyone again, so I thought… I told him we could start a family, that we loved each other in all the ways that counted. We would have been happy for longer, perhaps forever if it hadn’t been for that man. He came back and taunted John, tried to get him back and in the end, my poor husband was so broken up he could no longer stay here.”

“And you met that man?”

Sherlock asked, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

“No, they used to meet in town; he didn’t want the village to know. They suspected, but never saw a thing and I never ever said a word. I don’t know what’s come over me…”

“You’ve kept it to yourself for too long. Every secret we keep eats up a little bit of our heart,” he murmured, thinking of his own situation.

“He blames himself still… and he doesn’t trust anyone, aside from me. And see what I have gone and done now,” she said, tearfully.

“Your secret is safe with me, Mary. I wonder if perhaps you could do me a favour: keep an eye on your man. There may be more to it than mere bluster on his part.”

She nodded, wiping her face on the corner of her apron.

“Alright, my Lord,” she assented.

Sherlock shook her hand and left. His impeccable manners had allowed him to keep what he hoped had been an indifferent countenance, but all he’d wanted to do was scream. Luckily, he’d told Victor not to wait for him, that he relished the chance of a long walk back.

He strode to the end of the village, impatient of being alone, communing only with nature.

It was as if the clouds had parted and the sun was shining right in his face, but instead of feeling its warmth, he was frozen to the bone.

John had used him to exact some vile revenge on his class. That explained why he had been so detached when they had parted, why he never called Sherlock by his given name. Sherlock had been a pawn in a game he’d never wanted to play.  He felt like he would never be warm again.


	11. A Rose By Any Other Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sexy times. And a dog.

Sherlock had ascended atop the hill and reached the bit of countryside skirting the wood. He wandered around like a stricken thing. He was not really aware of anything outside him, till he was startled by the loud barking of the dog at Marehay Farm. Marehay Farm! Its pastures ran up to Fansworth park fence, so they were neighbours, but it was some time since Sherlock had called.

'Redbeard!' he said to the big bull-terrier. 'Redbeard! Have you forgotten me? Don't you know me?' He was fond of dogs, and Redbeard came up to him and licked his hand. That little bit of tenderness melted some of the ice in his heart, so he hunkered down and pressed his cheek on top of the warm, velvety head.

Mrs Flint appeared. She was a woman about Mary’s age, had been a school-teacher, but Sherlock suspected her of being rather a false little thing.

“Why, it’s your Lordship!” And Mrs Flint's eyes glowed again, and she flushed like a young girl. 'Redbeard. Be quiet!'

“He didn’t recognise me, at first,” said Sherlock, shaking hands. The Flints were Trevor’s tenants.

“It's so long since we’ve seen you. I do hope you are better.”

“Yes thanks, I'm all right.”

'We've hardly seen you all winter. Will you have something to eat or drink? You look awfully peaky, if you allow me to say.”

They went into the living-room, where a baby was sitting on the rag hearth rug, and the table was roughly set for tea. A young servant-girl backed down the passage, shy and awkward.

“I was just having a rough cup of tea all by myself. Luke's gone to market, so I can have it when I like. Would you care for a cup, your Lordship? I don't suppose it's what you're used to, but if you would...”

Sherlock would, though he didn't want to be reminded of what he was used to. There was a great relaying of the table, and the best cups brought and the best tea-pot.

“If only you wouldn't take any trouble,” said Sherlock.

But if Mrs Flint took no trouble, where was the fun!

He had a cup of tea, which was rather strong, and very good bread and butter, and bottled damsons. Mrs Flint flushed and glowed and bridled with excitement, as if Sherlock were some gallant knight.

“It's a poor little tea, though,” said Mrs Flint.

“It's much nicer than at home,” said Sherlock truthfully.

“Oh-h!” said Mrs Flint, not believing, of course.

But at last Sherlock rose.

“I must go,” she said. “My husband has no idea where I am. He'll be wondering all kinds of things.”

“He'll never think you're here,” laughed Mrs Flint excitedly. “He'll be sending the crier round.”

If she only knew, Sherlock thought.

They came to the little garden gate.

“Which way were you going?” asked Mrs Flint.

“By the Warren.”

“Let me see! Oh yes, the cows are in the gin close. But they're not up yet. But the gate's locked, you'll have to climb.”

“I can climb,” said Sherlock.

They came to the fence, beyond which the young fir-wood bristled dense. There was a little gate, but it was locked. In the grass on the inside stood a bottle, empty.

“There's the keeper's empty bottle for his milk,” explained Mrs Flint. “We bring it as far as here for him, and then he fetches it himself.”

“When?” asked Sherlock, trying not to sound as worried as he felt.

“Oh, any time he's around. Often in the morning. Well, goodbye Lord Trevor! And do come again. It was so lovely having you.”

Sherlock climbed the fence into the narrow path between the dense, bristling young firs.

 

He was startled out of his muse, and gave a cry of fear. A man was there. It was the keeper. He stood in the path like a ghost, barring his way.

“You, here, he said in surprise.

“Let me pass,” Sherlock panted.

“What’s wrong? Have you been to the hut?”

“No! No! I went to Tevershall and walked back. Let me pass,” he insisted, his voice shaking with emotion.

John looked at him, searchingly, and he felt his lips tremble.

“And what did you do there?” he asked rather sternly.

Sherlock had intended to keep his word, but the pain in his chest was too acute: he had to extract the thorn or die from it.

“I talked to Mary. She told me about you.”

John’s eyes went dark and his mouth was distorted by a grimace.

“Aye, and now your Lordship has satisfied his curiosity and had his little fun, isn’t that so? I did tell warn you, that you would be ashamed of it, but you had to have your sordid thrill! Will you tell your gentleman friends about it and laugh with them, too?”

Sherlock would have slapped him, if he hadn’t been instinctively certain it would have broken their relationship for good.

“I am not him!” he screamed, past caring whether Mrs Flint could hear them. A chord of hysteria was vibrating in his throat, and he couldn’t tame his voice into a quieter pitch. “I am not that man you loved. How you must hate him and still love him! There is no room for me is there? And I thought you were different from those who care only for my name, but you are even worse! You can’t even say my name, you can’t bear to, because you want to say another, the name of the man you still love! Let. Me. Pass!”

He tried to push John aside, but he was unmovable, as heavy as a granite statue and as impenetrable. The only sign of emotion in him was his breath, which was rapid and shallow, coming out of his nostrils like billows of smoke from a chimney.

“You think this is the reason why I never said your name?” he asked, his voice ragged. He stalked closer, with such a tempest in his eyes the younger man drew back a little.

“What other reason could there be?” Sherlock whispered.

Suddenly, John pounced on him, crushing him in arms and kissing his face and neck; fast, hard, loving kisses.

“Because I knew the moment I said it there would be no going back, for me,” he panted, nibbling Sherlock’s earlobe.

The roller-coaster of emotions he’d been through during that endless day, had caused in Sherlock a similar effect to the opium he’d had in his Parisian days. His palms were sweating and his heart was speeding, while his legs had turned to jelly.

“And you want there to be a way back?” he croaked.

John took his face in his strong hands and gave him a look of fathomless tenderness, tinged with sadness and longing.

“Sherlock,” he whispered, and kissed him sweetly on the mouth.

 

When John’s tongue caressed his, Sherlock’s knees buckled. Thankfully, John was holding him so tight that he was spared the indignity of passing out like a Victorian heroine.

“Let me take you to the hut. You need to lie down,” John said. He held him fast and Sherlock felt his strength and his urgency. With another man, he may have wanted to resist and snap back at him. But John’s body was urgent against his, and he hadn't the wish to fight him.

He looked into the man’s face and John looked back at him. His eyes were brilliant, fierce, loving. Sherlock’s insides were molten, his mind unspooled.

John led him through the wall of prickly trees, until they came to the clearing by the hut. The keeper unlocked the door and once inside, he guided Sherlock toward the chair by the hearth. In a fever of motion, he prepared the blankets on the floor and discarded his clothes. Sherlock tried to divest himself but his fingers were sluggish and ineffectual. His entire body was heavy and sensitised, every touch reverberating in his nerves and veins. John’s hands were feather soft on him, like he’d guessed his lover’s predicament. They lay down on the blanket, front to front.

“What do you need,” John asked him, softly, as he caressed his naked body with reverence.

Sherlock wanted so many things and his lover’s touch was distracting him: he wanted John’s fingers to pinch his nipples, his mouth to devour his sex, his chest to rub against his stomach. But he had felt so empty, for so long.

“I want you to enter me,” he murmured, and sobbed at the combined sensation of a tongue in his mouth and a hand closing tight around his glans.

“Are you sure? Have you done it before?” John panted, still licking at Sherlock’s lips, stealing his breath with every stroke of his fist.

“Yes, oh, oh, I was… a long time ago… but I, oh, yes, I loved it, oh god,” he moaned, at the relentless pressure around his shaft.

“You were made just for me, weren’t you? I will die in you, I know it, and I don’t care anymore,” John said, before kissing him again, deep and sensual.

“We don’t have enough time for the way I want to prepare you, but,” John started.

“I can prepare myself,” Sherlock offered, and he slid two fingers into his mouth and sucked them.

“Not when you are with me, you will not,” the keeper replied, and he pulled the long elegant fingers out and kissed them briefly.

He stood up and came back with a small jar of mineral oil.

“For the hinges,” he explained.

“How resourceful of you,” Sherlock joked, and they both laughed at that. But the mirth soon died down, as the younger man felt the drizzle of warm oil on his testicles, trickling down on his perineum, and then John’s slick fingers massaging, tugging, probing.

“Tell me if I hurt you, alright? No pleasure for me, if you are in pain,” John said, dark and hoarse. But Sherlock couldn’t speak, as the sudden teasing of a finger stabbed him trough with intense pleasure. He tried to bear down and force it inside, but John kept him still, with a hand curled around his hip.

“Slowly, slowly,” he murmured, as if he was gentling a wild horse.

When the first digit entered him to the hilt, both men groaned, and proceedings sped up after that as it was evident neither was willing to suffer more of that torture.

“I’m ready, please, please,” Sherlock whimpered, after the third finger, and his lover obliged.

John felt bigger than he’d expected and there was no denying the pain and discomfort of it. Face to face, John could see his every twitch and he slowed down and stilled every time a swift contraction distorted his lover’s countenance.

When he was finally buried inside him to the root, John looked into his eyes with lustful adoration. And Sherlock remembered what he loved about the act, but this was untested territory, because his heart was as full as his body.

He caressed John’s buttocks, pulling him softly towards him, inviting him to move.

“Oh god, you are so feverish and tight, lovely, lovely,” the man chanted.

 As he began to move, there awoke in Sherlock strange thrills rippling inside him. Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite and melting him inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a culmination. He was dimly aware of the wild little cries he was uttering, submerged by the groans and moans of his lover.

He wanted to caress John, but his body didn’t respond: his back and his neck arched, and his arms went up above his head, his fingers at times tearing at his own sweaty curls. The more he offered himself to John this way, opening, pushing up, the more the violence of his lover’s thrust increased, and his hands pinched and scratched, in a ferocious, animalistic frenzy.

“Oh, deeper, deeper,” Sherlock sobbed, at some point, and John pulled him towards him and the thrust that followed stabbed at a part of him he barely knew existed.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he keened and his vision filled with burning lights.

John let out a growl, and his motions became faster and more erratic.

“Now, now, my darling, now,” he urged, licking up Sherlock’s throat.

“I… yes, touch me, yes, oh, oh,” he wailed, because John had curled his fingers around Sherlock’s aching penis and started stroking, quick and rough.

This time they did come off together.

Sherlock’s world went black and silent; a wet, fevered bliss enveloped his body, as the evidence of their orgasms decorated him inside out, with undeletable patterns of love and devotion.

“My darling, my love,” he heard John croon, as he cradled Sherlock in his arms, uncaring of the mess smearing both their chests.

“John,” Sherlock slurred, and was rewarded with a beatific smile and a kiss on his forehead.

“It's good when it's like that. Most people live their lives through and they never know it,” John said, speaking rather dreamily.

Sherlock looked into his brooding face.

'Don't people often come off together?' Sherlock asked with naive curiosity.

“A good many of them never. You can see by the raw look of them.”

“Have you come off like that with other men?” the younger man asked, closing his eyes to savour the last throbs of his pleasure.

“Not like that, no. That was different,” John said, softly.

“Different how?”

“Deeper, more intense. Loving.”

And Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at him; he watched John’s face, and the passion for him moved in his bowels. He couldn’t resist it any longer.

“I love you,” he murmured, caressing John’s cheek. The man took his hand and kissed his fingers, one by one.

“You are everything to me,” he replied, in a solemn tone.

 

Soon, it was time to leave. Sherlock now understood that John’s detachment was caused by the pain of separation, and he felt the same.

Outside, the last level rays of the sun touched the wood. “I won't come with you,” John said; “better not.”

They kissed one last time and parted.

Sherlock went slowly home, realizing the depth of the other thing in him. Another self was alive in him, burning molten and soft inside, and with this self he adored John. He adored him till his knees were weak as he walked. It was not the passion that was new to him, it was the yearning adoration. He knew he had always feared it, for it left him weak. Sherlock feared his adoration, yet he would not at once fight against it. He could, but he didn’t want to. And somehow he knew that John would not take his freedom away from him, that he would love him precisely because of that freedom.

 

“I walked over by Marehay, and I had tea with Mrs Flint,” he said to Victor. “She gave me tea. Did you wonder where I was?”

“Well, I wondered, but I guessed you had dropped in somewhere to tea,” said Victor jealously. With a sort of second sight, he sensed something new in his husband, something to him quite incomprehensible. He thought that all that ailed Sherlock was that they did not have a family. He wanted to talk about having a baby again, but he hesitated.

“I saw you go across the park to the iron gate, my Lord,' said Mrs Donovan; “so I thought perhaps you'd called at the Rectory.”

“I nearly did, then I turned towards Marehay instead.”

Their eyes: Mrs Donovan's brown and bright and searching; Sherlock's blue-green and bright and strangely beautiful. Mrs Donovan was sure Sherlock had a lover, and something in her soul exulted. But who was he? Who was he? Perhaps Mrs Flint would provide a clue.

Sherlock would not take his bath that evening. The sense of John’s flesh touching him, his very stickiness inside him, was dear to him, and in a sense holy.


	12. Like a Thief in The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As someone wisely suggested, I will add chapters when I have them ready.
> 
> The mystery starts here. Because after all it's Sherlock Holmes we are talking about, so there has to be a mystery, right?

Victor was very healthy, considering. He looked ruddy in the face, his shoulders were broad and strong, his chest deep, he had put on flesh. The doctor had said he was improving by leaps and bounds, and that something might be resolved in the way he was most hoping for. And Victor credited Mrs Donovan for these improvements, her constant devotion and care.

So his rather prominent pale eyes had am impudent look, as if he were triumphing over life in spite of everything: “who knoweth the mysteries of love--for it can triumph even against the angels.”

His dread had been the nights when he had been unable to sleep. It had been awful indeed, when annihilation had pressed in on him on every side. It had been ghastly, to exist without having any life. But now he could ring for Mrs Donovan. And she would always come. She would come in her dressing gown, with her hair in a plait down her back, girlish and dim. And she would make him coffee or camomile tea, and she would play chess or piquet with him. She had a faculty of playing even chess well enough when she was three parts asleep, well enough to make her worth beating. So, in the silent intimacy of the night, they sat, or she sat and he lay on the bed, with the reading-lamp shedding its solitary light on them, and they played, played together--then they had a cup of coffee and a biscuit together, hardly speaking, in the silence of night, but being a reassurance to one another.

And this night Mrs Donovan was wondering who Lord Trevor's lover was. And she was thinking of her own Ted. In her half-sleep, thoughts of her Ted and thoughts of Lord Trevor's unknown lover mingled, and then she felt that if Sherlock was happy then she should be too. But could she be happy again?

 

Sherlock was in bed, and fast asleep all this time. But John Watson, like Sir Victor, could not rest. He had closed the coops and made his round of the wood, then gone home and eaten supper. But he did not go to bed. Instead he sat by the fire and thought.

He thought of his boyhood in Tevershall, of his married life, of that man who had broken him, albeit not completely. He thought of his life abroad, as a soldier. India, Egypt, then India again: the blind, thoughtless life with the horses: the colonel who had loved him and whom he had loved, in his own diminished way: the several years that he had been an officer, a lieutenant with a very fair chance of being a captain. Then the death of the colonel from pneumonia, and his own narrow escape from death: his damaged health, his deep restlessness, his leaving the army and coming back to England to be a working man again.

He was temporizing with life. He had thought he would be safe, at least for a time, in this wood. He would be alone, and apart from life, which was all he wanted. He had to have some sort of a background. And this was his native place. There was even his mother, though she had never meant very much to him. And he could go on in life, existing from day to day, without connection and without hope. For he did not know what to do with himself.

Since he had been an officer for some years, and had mixed among the other officers and civil servants, with their wives and families, he had lost all ambition to “get on”.

So, he had come back to his own class. To find there, what he had forgotten during his absence of years, a pettiness and a vulgarity of manner extremely distasteful. He admitted now at last, how important manners were. He admitted, also, how important it was even _to pretend_ not to care about the small things of life. But among the common people there was no pretence. He could not stand it. He refused to _care_ about money.

It was futility, futility to the _nth_ power.

But why care, why bother? And he had not cared nor bothered till now, when Sherlock had come into his life. John was nearly ten years older than he. And he was a thousand years older in experience, starting from the bottom. The connection between them was growing closer. He could see the day when they would have to make a life together.

And what then? What then? Must he start again, with nothing to start on? He had assisted the army doctor while in India, and he had loved taking care of people, making them better, Sherlock had guessed that much. But he couldn’t very well act as a physician when he had no formal education or training, besides being the wrong class. That again! And must he entangle this young man? Must he cause trouble and pain to Sir Victor, who was damaged already? Misery! Lots of misery! And he was no longer young and neither was he the insouciant sort. Every bitterness and every ugliness would hurt him and Sherlock too.

But even if they got clear of Sir Victor he divorced Mary, what were they going to do? What was he, himself going to do? For he must do something. He couldn't be a mere hanger-on, even if he had a bit of money from his pension.

It was the insoluble. He could only think of going away, to try a new air.

He could not rest nor even go to bed. After sitting in a stupor of bitter thoughts until midnight, he got suddenly from his chair and reached for his coat and gun.

It was a starry night, but moonless. He went on a slow, scrupulous, soft-stepping and stealthy round.  But when he had done his slow, cautious beating of his bounds - it was nearly a five-mile walk - he was tired. It was cold, and he was coughing. A fine cold draught blew over the knoll.

He thought of Sherlock: he would have given all he had or ever might have to hold him in his arms, both of them wrapped in one blanket, and sleep. All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have him there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with Sherlock in his arms was his only need.

He went to the hut, and wrapped himself in the blanket and lay on the floor to sleep. But he could not, he was cold. And besides, he felt cruelly his own solitude.

He wanted Sherlock, to touch him, to hold him fast against him in one moment of completeness and sleep.

He got up again and went out, towards the park gates this time: then slowly along the path towards the house. It was nearly four o'clock, still clear and cold, but no sign of dawn. He was used to the dark, he could see well.

Slowly, slowly the great house drew him, as a magnet. He wanted to be near Sherlock. It was not only desire, but the knowledge he was no longer complete without him. Perhaps he could find him. Perhaps he could even find some way in to him. For the need was imperious.

He slowly, silently climbed the incline to the hall. There was the house, low and long and obscure, with one light burning downstairs, in Sir Victor's room. But which room Sherlock was in, the man who held the other end of the frail thread which drew him so mercilessly, that he did not know.

He went a little nearer, gun in hand, and stood motionless on the drive, watching the house. He stood motionless, waiting, while the dawn faintly and imperceptibly paled behind him. He saw the light in the house go out.

But he did not see Mrs Donovan come to the window and draw back the old curtain of dark-blue silk, and stand herself in the dark room, looking out on the half-dark of the approaching day, looking for the longed-for dawn, waiting, waiting for Victor to be asleep.

She stood blind with sleep at the window, waiting. And as she stood, she started, and almost cried out. For there was a man out there on the drive, a black figure in the twilight. She watched, but without making a sound to disturb Sir Victor.

The daylight began to rustle into the world, and the dark figure seemed to go smaller and more defined. She made out the gun and gaiters and baggy jacket: it was John Watson, the game-keeper.

And what did the man want? Did he want to rouse the house? What was he standing there for, transfixed, looking up at the house like a love-sick puppy?

Goodness! The knowledge went through Mrs Donovan like a shot. He was Lord Trevor's lover! He! He!

To think of it! He'd been a clever boy, had a scholarship for Sheffield Grammar School, and learned science and things: and then after all had become an overhead blacksmith shoeing horses, because he was fond of horses, he said: but really because he liked to be apart from his kind, she was quite sure of it.

He was quite as clever as Sir Victor. But he had an odd temper, which could flare up at any given moment; he was not a man to be trifled with, despite his quiet appearance.

For years he was gone, all the time of the war, and a lieutenant and all: quite the gentleman, really quite the gentleman! Then to come back to Tevershall and go as a game-keeper! Really, some people can't take their chances when they've got them! And talking with that accent, when she, Sally Donovan, knew he spoke like any gentleman, _really_.

Well, well! So his Lordship had fallen for him! A Tevershall lad born and bred, and he the husband of a baronet! Anything was possible these days, she mused.

 

But John, as the day grew, had realized: it's no good!

With a sudden snap the bleeding desire that had drawn him after her broke. He had broken it, because it must be so. There must be a coming together on both sides. And if Sherlock wasn't coming to him, he wouldn't track him down. He mustn't. He must go away, till he came.

He turned slowly, ponderingly, accepting again the isolation. He knew it was better so. Sherlock must come to him: it was no use trailing after him. No use!

Mrs Donovan saw him disappear.

“Well, well!” she said. “He's the one man I never thought of; and the one man I might have thought of.”

And she glanced triumphantly at the already sleeping Victor, as she stepped softly from the room.

 

The following day, Sherlock was sorting out one of the Fansworth lumber rooms. There were several: the house was a warren, and the family never sold anything. Sir Geoffrey's father had liked pictures and Sir Geoffrey's mother had liked _cinquecento_ furniture. Sir Geoffrey himself had liked old carved oak chests, vestry chests. So it went on through the generations. Victor collected very modern pictures, at very moderate prices.

So in the lumber room there were bad Sir Edwin Landseers and pathetic William Henry Hunt birds' nests: and other Academy stuff, enough to frighten the son of an R.A. He determined to look through it one day, and clear it all. And the grotesque furniture interested him.

Wrapped up carefully to preserve it from damage and dry-rot was the old family cradle, of rosewood. Mrs Donovan unwrapped and inspected it.

“Well, this won't be needed,” said Sherlock, dryly.

The woman blushed and kept her gaze on the cradle.

“Sir Victor told me to say nothing, but the doctor told him the potency may easily come back, even if the muscles of the hips and legs are paralysed,” she stammered.

“You mean…” he couldn’t even say it. The idea someone other than John may want to touch him that way turned Sherlock’s stomach. His own husband, and he couldn’t even consider brushing against his naked skin. He shuddered at the thought.

Now that he remembered how full of energy Victor had been when he’d worked at the question of the mines, as if his sexual potency were returning. Sherlock’s heart recoiled in terror. But he was quick-witted to realise the woman intended to take advantage of this piece of news. Perhaps that was the way out of his prison, if he could only contrive its successful outcome.

“Once the potency is back, it’s only a matter of… well, I’m sure your Lordship understands better than I do,” she concluded, her face still turned away.

“I’m sure we both do, understand, I mean,” replied Sherlock, with a little smile.

 

He chose three R. A. pictures of sixty years ago, to send to the Duke of Shortlands for his next charitable sale. How furious Victor would be; he didn’t like his paintings to be given away, but surely such monstrosities! Sherlock pondered, distaste showing clear on his expressive countenance.

Among other horrors in this lumber room was a little medicine store, brand new and shiny, with bottles labelled Laudanum, Tincture of Myrrh, Ess. Cloves and so on: they were sealed and new only the first one was empty. Sherlock could still smell the spicy, sweet effluvium of the opiate. He recalled the debauched hunger he’d felt because of it, the desire and the anguish; he closed his eyes and for a moment he was back in Paris, and his senses were pervaded with the lassitude of intoxication, his skin prickling with the ecstatic revulsion of it; all the contradictions that amounted to so much and yet so very little. In his reverie, John’s touch overrode the past and the present, and sealed his future.  Everything was perfectly new and old, but his emptiness had been forever filled.  John and he, they fitted together like a puzzle, Sherlock thought. He sighed and opened his eyes, and then another more practical thought struck him.

The bottles could not possibly have spilled: there wasn't room. The thing was wonderfully made and contrived, excellent craftsmanship of the Victorian order. Some Trevor must have been a collector, for the thing had never been used.

But somehow the bottle of laudanum was empty and its seal broken, while the cabinet itself was spotless, no a grain of dust on it, unlike all the other objects: what did that mean? He needed to think about the implications of this, but he didn’t want to arouse Mrs Donovan’s curiosity. After all, she wasn’t a simpleton and she would soon see something was the matter.

Thankfully, she had been distracted by an old-fashioned toiletry set.

“Look what beautiful brushes, so expensive, even the shaving brushes, three perfect ones! No! and those scissors! They're the best that money could buy. Oh, I call it lovely!”

“Do you?” said Sherlock. “Then you have it.”

“Oh no, my Lord!”

“Of course! It will only lie here till Doomsday. If you won't have it, I'll send it to the Duke as well as the pictures, and he doesn't deserve so much. Do have it!”

“Oh, your Lordship! Why, I shall never be able to thank you.”

“You needn't try,” smirked Sherlock.

And Mrs Donovan sailed down with the huge and very black box in her arms, flushing bright pink in her excitement.

She went to the village with it and showed it to her friends. They thought it marvellous; and then started the whisper of Anderson’s increasingly odd behaviour.

“My George saw him confabulate with a Turkish fellow. All well dressed he was, with an embroidered coat and all,” said Mrs Weedon.

But Mrs Donovan wasn’t convinced; she knew George Weedon could see pigs fly when he was on the gin.

“And I saw John Watson having words with Anderson and they weren’t civil ones at that. You could tell by the look on his face; like hail and thunder it were,” Mrs Weedon recounted, nodding with pleasure at being the conveyor of these news.

“It’s always the quiet ones that will surprise you most. I bet he was a handful in the army,” Mrs Donovan concurred.

“My George says Watson is a good shot, but he wouldn’t be half surprised if he wrung someone’s neck sooner or later. He has a temper on him, that man, for all that he looks so meek!”

“Meek, indeed! They are the worst ones, likely as any to turn mad and vicious!” Mrs Donovan agreed, but she did not think ill of the keeper, despite his carryings-on with his Lordship, of possibly because of them. She had the deepest respect for any one of her class who could get one over the masters. And she, herself, perhaps was about to do the same.

 

Not long after, the rector visited Victor:

They discussed the collieries. Victor's idea was, that his coal, even the poor sort, could be made into hard concentrated fuel that would burn at great heat if fed with certain damp, acidulated air at a fairly strong pressure. It had long been observed that in a particularly strong, wet wind the pit-bank burned very vivid, gave off hardly any fumes, and left a fine powder of ash, instead of the slow pink gravel.

“If you can do it, then splendid, splendid, my dear boy. Haw! Splendid! If I can be of any help, I shall be delighted. I'm afraid I am a little out of date, and my collieries are like me. But who knows, when I'm gone, there may be men like you. Splendid! It will employ all the men again, and you won't have to sell your coal, or fail to sell it. A splendid idea, and I hope it will be a success. If I had sons of my own, no doubt they would have up-to-date ideas for Shipley: no doubt! By the way, dear boy, is there any foundation to the rumour that we may entertain hopes of an heir to Fansworth?”

“Is there a rumour?” asked Victor.

“Well, my dear boy, Marshall from Fillingwood asked me, that's all I can say about a rumour. Of course I wouldn't repeat it for the world, if there were no foundation.”

“Well, Sir,” said Victor uneasily, but with strange bright eyes. “There is a hope. There is a hope.”

The rector shook Victor's hand.

“My dear boy, that’s really splendid!”

The old man was really moved.

 

Sherlock was in the sitting room reading a letter when Victor came in.

“Sherlock,” he said, “did you know there was a rumour that I am going to supply Fansworth with a son and heir?”

Sherlock shook his head.

“No!” he said. “Is it a joke? Or malice?”

Victor paused before he answered:

“Neither, I hope. I hope it may be a prophecy.”

Sherlock kept silent, afraid to say the wrong thing.

“I had a letter from Mycroft,” he said. “He wants to know you can spare me for a few days; he wants me to go to London in a week or so.”

“London?” said Victor.

“Oh, I won’t be staying for more than two, three days.”

There was silence for a time.

“Well,” said Victor slowly, and a little gloomily. “I suppose I could stand it for three days, as long as you’d come back.”

“Of course I’d come back,' he said, heavy with conviction. He was thinking of John.

Victor felt his conviction, and somehow he believed him.

“In that case,” he said, and turned the chair to leave.

“I meant to ask you something; I found a medicine store in the lumber rooms; it appears unused, but the bottle of Laudanum is empty. You didn’t take it, did you?”

Victor’s eyes widened in dismayed surprise.

“That was my father’s! No, of course I didn’t! Are you sure?”

“Quite sure!”

“That is a nuisance,” said Victor. “But there surely must be an explanation… but what a nuisance!” he repeated, and left the room having completely forgotten about his husband’s future trip to London.

He doesn’t care about the mystery or about me, Sherlock thought with displeasure, only about the inconvenience to himself.

 

It was already May, but cold and wet again. In spite of the new greenness, the country was dismal. It was rather chilly, and there was smoke on the rain, and a certain sense of exhaust vapour in the air. One just had to live from one's resistance. No wonder these people were ugly and tough.

It was as if dismalness had soaked through and through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty was appalling.

Sherlock decided to walk to the village, but regretted his decision as soon as he got there.

Tevershall! That was Tevershall! Shakespeare's England! No, but the England of today, as Sherlock had realized since she had come to live in it. It was producing a new race of mankind, over-conscious in the money and social and political side, on the spontaneous, intuitive side dead, but dead. Half-corpses, all of them: but with a terrible insistent consciousness in the other half. There was something uncanny and underground about it all. It was an under-world. And quite incalculable. How shall we understand the reactions in half-corpses? When Sherlock saw the great lorries full of steel-workers from Sheffield, weird, distorted smallish beings like men, off for an excursion to Matlock, his bowels fainted and he thought: I have to get away from here! It is just a nightmare.

He felt again in a wave of terror the grey, gritty hopelessness of it all. And there was Victor wanting a baby, and an heir to Fansworth! An heir to Fansworth! He shuddered with dread.

Yet John Watson had come out of all this! Yes, but he was as apart from it all as Sherlock was. And this was England, the vast bulk of England: as Sherlock knew, since she had motored from the centre of it.

England, my England! But which is _my_ England? The stately homes of England make good photographs, and create the illusion of a connexion with the Elizabethans. The handsome old halls are there, from the days of Good Queen Anne and Tom Jones. One by one, like the stately homes, they were abandoned.

Sherlock, belonging to the leisured classes, had clung to the remnants of the old England. It had taken him years to realize that it was really gone and perhaps justly so. What would come after? Sherlock could not imagine.

A life with no beauty in it, no intuition?

He slowly walked back home, thinking of London and making plans for the future.

 


	13. À la guerre comme à la guerre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All is fair in love and war.  
> John and Sherlock get to know each other a little better.

Coming downstairs in the morning, Sherlock found the keeper's dog Flossie sitting in the corridor outside Victor's room, and whimpering very faintly.

“Why, Flossie!” he said softly, scratching the spaniel’s ear. “What are you doing here?”

And he quietly opened Victor's door. Victor was sitting up in bed, with the bed-table and typewriter pushed aside, and John was standing at attention at the foot of the bed. Flossie ran in. With a faint gesture of head and eyes, Watson ordered her to the door again, and she slunk out.

“Oh, good morning, Victor!” Sherlock said. “I didn't know you were busy.”

Then she looked at John, saying good morning to him. He murmured his reply, barely looking at Sherlock. But the younger man felt a whiff of passion touch him, from the man’s mere presence.

He slipped out of the room again, and up to his rooms. He sat in the window, and saw John go down the drive, with his curious, silent motion, effaced. He had a natural sort of quiet distinction, an aloof pride, and also a certain look of authority.

And yet, after all, he was one of his husband’s servants; and he, Sherlock, was a master, but a master of what when his life had been nothing but a denial of his most authentic nature?

 

It was a sunny day, and Sherlock was reading in the garden, while Mrs Donovan was pegging down carnations, and putting in small plants for the summer. She had chosen that precise spot, so she could engage the young man in conversation, to test the waters, so to speak.

“It’s good for Sir Victor to take such an interest in the mines. My late husband,” she started, and looked on the verge of tears.

“Why did he get killed, do you think?” he asked. “He was happy with you?”

“I don't know, my Lord! He sort of wouldn't give in to things: he wouldn't really go with the rest. And then he hated ducking his head for anything on earth. A sort of obstinacy, that gets itself killed. Some men are made that way, my Lord,” she said, looking him in the eye; he understood that she knew about John and him. Whether she intended to act on that knowledge, he would have to find out.

“You must miss him,” he said, non-committally.

“Aye, my Lord! For months, I kept expecting him back. Especially at nights. I kept waking up thinking: Why he's not in bed with me! It was as if _my feelings_ wouldn't believe he'd gone. I just felt he'd _have_ to come back and lie against me, so I could feel him with me. That was all I wanted, to feel him there with me, warm. And it took me a thousand shocks before I knew he wouldn't come back, it took me years.”

“The touch of him,” said Sherlock, dreamily.

“That's it, my Lord! It's terrible, once you've got a man into your blood!” she said. “But can a touch last so long?” Sherlock asked suddenly. “That you could feel him so long?”

“Oh my Lord, what else is there to last? When I look at folks who've never really been warmed through by that touch, well, they seem poor to me, no matter how they may dress up.”

“And what about the other things in life? Family, work, the purpose we assign to our days? We can’t just feed off love alone, or it would soon turn stale, don’t you think?”

Mrs Donovan shook her head, as if he were a child asking for the moon.

“My Lord, it is that touch that makes the rest worthwhile; without it, it’s like a house of cards, it all falls to pieces.”

They exchanged a glance that said more than words could have. Sherlock understood he had nothing to fear from her and she got confirmation of what she’d guessed already.

 

Sherlock went to the wood directly after lunch. It was really a lovely day: yellow celandines now were in crowds, flat open, pressed back in urgency, and the yellow glitter of themselves. It was the yellow, the powerful yellow of early summer.

John was not at the hut. Everything was serene, brown chickens running lustily. Sherlock walked on towards the cottage, because he wanted to find John.

His cottage stood in the sun, off the wood's edge. In the little garden, red double daisies made a border to the path. There was the bark of a dog, and Flossie came running.

The wide-open door! so he was at home. John rose, and came to the door, wiping his mouth with a red handkerchief still chewing.

“May I come in?” Sherlock said.

“Come in!”

The sun shone into the bare room, which still smelled of a mutton chop. The fire was red, rather low, the bar dropped, the kettle singing.

On the table was his plate, with potatoes and the remains of the chop; also bread in a basket, salt, and a blue mug with beer. The table-cloth was white oil-cloth, he stood in the shade.

“Do eat,” Sherlock said. But he did not touch the food. “Are you sad today?” he asked.

John turned his blue eyes quickly, and gazed direct on him.

“Sad, no; bored! I had to go getting summonses for two poachers I caught, and, oh well, I don't like doing that.”

He spoke cold, good English, and there was anger in his voice.

“Do you hate being a game-keeper?”

“Being a game-keeper, no! So long as I'm left alone. But when I have to wait for a lot of fools to attend to me...oh well, I get mad...” and he smiled, with a certain humour.

“Couldn't you be really independent?”

“I could, but I've got to have something that keeps me occupied. And I'm not in a good enough temper to work for myself. It's got to be a sort of job for somebody else, or I should throw it up in a month, out of bad temper. So altogether I'm very well off here, especially lately…”

He laughed at Sherlock again, with mocking humour.

“I'm going to London soon, for a few days,” the younger man said.

“London, what for?”

“I’m going to visit someone,” Sherlock replied, vaguely. John didn’t insist, but he was evidently displeased.

“You won't forget me when I'm gone, will you?” the younger man asked. Again John lifted his eyes and looked full at him.

“Forget?” he said. “You know I could never do that, not if I wanted to.”

“And you want to?”

“No,” the man said, “never.”

He looked at Sherlock with queer darkened eyes.

“I want to spend the night with you, go to sleep by your side and wake up in your bed,” Sherlock said, and his voice shook a little.

“What will Sir Victor say?”

“He won’t know, not with Mrs Donovan in the house.”

John came behind Sherlock and placed his hands on his shoulders.

“Sleeping, is that all his Lordship wants?” he murmured, and Sherlock was about to protest, when the man’s hands migrated upwards and sank into his curls, massaging and tugging lightly.

“Oh, this is so…yes, oh, please,” Sherlock moaned, as John bent down and licked the back of his neck.

“I’ve never kissed you here,” John said, and went on to do just that.

“Sleeping will be part of it,” Sherlock mumbled, and John laughed happily.

Sherlock joined in, and it was nice to have fun together, almost as nice as their love-making. It pulled them closer, when they had been drifting apart a little.

John planted a soft kiss on his lover’s curls then moved to the stove to prepare tea.

“Sugar and milk?” Sherlock asked, and mused how little he knew about the man he was intending to spend the rest of his life with.

John nodded and stared at him with a searching look.

“You’re anxious about things,” he said, and it wasn’t meant as a question.

“Do you like me? I don’t mean the touch of me, but me, the way I am.”

The older man took his time, seemingly fascinated by the swirls of cream in mug. At length he replied, choosing his words carefully.

“From the first time I saw you, I liked the look of you: young, lost and a little sad. And yes, the feel of you is sweeter than anything, but… what draws me to you is that something that we have in common, you and me… that sets us apart from the rest; this aloneness and not really belonging to any group of folks. There is mettle in you, and more, that I don’t know yet.”

Sherlock was strangely moved by the words, and when he spoke his voice was lower than usual.

“You don’t mind that I am stubborn?” he asked.

John grinned, which made him look like a boy again.

“That you are; and rash and careless with your emotions, letting them run wild… aye, I want you to have a mind of your own, even when I make love to you; what good would you be to me if you were tame like the rest of them?” 

Sherlock felt the impulse to unburden himself.

“I smoked opium for a brief while, in Paris, years ago… I had to be weaned off it. I had… relations while I was under the spell of the drug.”

John’s eyes had darkened and his face wore a fierce expression.

“Did anyone take what was not on offer?” he asked, low and feral.

Sherlock heard the menace in his tone, and shivered with fear and pleasure. He shook his head.

“Then if it pleased you, I am glad you had it and I am also glad it’s in the past. Pleasure’s not in great supply in this world.”

“Did you have some?”

“I thought I did, for a while, here; and then again in India. But now I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Because now I have had you, all these other pleasures I had before, seem like tepid water compared to good wine,” John explained, caressing Sherlock’s face and hair, softly.

“Oh,” was all the younger man could say, as he leaned into the touch.

“You can ask me questions, I don’t mind.”

Sherlock pondered about the number of things he wanted, needed to know, but there was one in particular that he desired to discuss.

“The man who broke your…the one you loved, was he like me in any way?”

A long silence followed, during which John sipped his tea, pensively.

“I fancied myself in love, but it was him who put that idea in me, more than the real thing, if you know what I mean. He was a gentleman, but not a genuine one, like you or even Sir Victor. He had black hair like you, but that’s where the likeness ends. I have wished we hadn’t crossed paths, but perhaps we should always take the rough with the smooth.”

“Was he horrible to you? Did he hurt you much?”

“Not horrible, no, but he spoiled the pleasure I took from him. There’s fellows who don’t care about that sort of passion, they only want power; power is a blind beast, same as money.”

Sherlock reflected on the many ways he’d been manipulated and taken advantage of and reached out to take John’s hand in his. The sight of the man’s blunt fingers laced with his pale ones gave him a frisson of quaint pleasure.

“Would you come and live in London with me?” he whispered, not daring to look John in the eye.

“And what about Sir Victor, what will he do? He must be doting on you,” was the reply.

“What if I told you he didn’t? That he has a future in mind that doesn’t include me? Would you come then?”

John’s thumb caressed the inside of his lover’s wrist.

“I won’t be a kept man.”

“I will have to find us both some occupation then,” Sherlock replied, with no trace of irony.

He had been thinking about it, but the only suggestion was abhorrent to him, as it included Mycroft. Much as he loved his brother, he had already entrusted him with too many decisions with regards to his life.

“It’s good enough that we have this,” John said, with a sort of fatalistic resignation that reminded Sherlock of his husband.

“Don’t say that, please,” he pleaded, “I will find a way, I promise. If there’s a problem, there’s also a solution.”

“And you like finding solutions,” the older man guessed, shrewdly.

“I do, actually, yes,” Sherlock concurred, seemingly surprised by this realisation. “And speaking of this, I have a mystery for you. I was clearing up the lumber room and came across a medicine store, you know, the old type with tincture bottles.”

John nodded and waited for him to continue.

“All the bottles were sealed, but the Laudanum’s was empty. The cabinet itself was clean, no dust on it. I told Victor and he knew nothing about it. He was rather put out, as the cabinet is a heirloom, but he had nothing more to say on the subject.”

“What about the servants, could they have taken it?”

“They don’t have access to the lumber room, and even if they did, why empty the bottle rather than remove it altogether? We do have guests, but… oh,” he stopped, as a memory surfaced in his mind.

“What?” John asked, but Sherlock needed to think things through before he involved his lover in what could be a slanderous supposition.

“I just remembered we may have guests for tea, I have to run. But if you’ll have me, I will be with you tomorrow night. Will that suit, Sir?” he joked.

“Whatever his Lordship wants! I haven't thanked your Lordship for doing me the honours of my tea-pot,” John said, and in a moment he was kneeling at Sherlock's feet. He placed his hands on his lover’s thighs, high enough to skim his clothed genitals with the tip of his thumbs. He bent down and kissed along the inseam until he reached the trousers straining buttons.

“Now, you can leave,” he declared, laughing at the young man’s breathless reaction.

Sherlock s stumbled down the path, and John stood in the doorway, grinning. Sherlock had to plod dumbly across into the wood, knowing John was standing there watching him, and wanting only to go back inside and never leave.

 

On the following day Victor wanted to go into the wood. It was a lovely morning, the pear-blossom and plum had suddenly appeared in the world in a wonder of white here and there.

Sherlock waited for him at the top of the drive, at the edge of the screen of beeches. His chair came puffing along with slow importance. As he joined his husband, he said:

“Sir Victor on his steed!”

He stopped and looked round at the façade of the long, low old brown house.

“Fansworth doesn't wink an eyelid!” he said. “But then why should it! I ride upon the achievements of the mind of man, and that beats a horse.”

“I suppose it does. And the souls in Plato riding up to heaven in a two-horse chariot would go in a Ford car now,” Sherlock said.

“Or a Rolls-Royce: Plato was an aristocrat!”

“Plato never thought we'd go one better than his black steed and his white steed, and have no steeds at all, only an engine!”

“Only an engine and gas!” said Victor. “I hope I can have some repairs done to the old place next year. I think I shall have about a thousand to spare for that: but work costs so much!” he added.

Victor was fine form on that bright morning. The larks were trilling away over the park, the distant pit in the hollow was fuming silent steam. It was almost like old days, before the war. Sherlock didn't really want to argue. But then he did not really want to go to the wood with Victor either. So he walked beside his chair in a certain obstinacy of spirit.

“There will be no more strikes at the mine, if the thing is properly managed.”

“Why not?” Sherlock asked, piqued.

“Because strikes will be made as good as impossible.”

“But will the men let you dictate terms?”

“My dear, they will have to: if one does it gently.”

“But mightn't there be a mutual understanding?”

“Absolutely: when they realize that the industry comes before the individual.”

“But must you own the industry?” Sherlock said.

“I don't. But to the extent I do own it, yes, most decidedly.”

“But the disparity?”

“That is fate. Why is the star Jupiter bigger than the star Neptune? You can't start altering the make-up of things!”

“But you make them work for you. They live the life of your coal-mine.”

“Not at all. Not one man is forced to work for me.”

“Their lives are industrialized and hopeless, and so are ours,” Sherlock stated.

“I don't think they are. That's just a romantic figure of speech, a relic of the swooning romanticism. You don't look at all a hopeless figure standing there, Sherlock my dear.”

Which was true. For his green-blue eyes were flashing, his colour was hot in his cheeks, he looked full of a rebellious passion far from the dejection of hopelessness. “No wonder the men hate you,” he said.

“They don't!” Victor replied. “And don't fall into errors: in your sense of the word, they are _not_ men. They are animals you don't understand, and never could. Don't thrust your illusions on other people. The masses were always the same, and will always be the same. The masses are unalterable. It is one of the most momentous facts of social science. _panem et circenses!_ ”

When Victor became really roused in his feelings about the common people, Sherlock was disgusted. There was something so dead and hopeless in him that made Sherlock yearn for John and his passion.

He looked at Victor with dazed eyes.

“Won't you come on?” he said.

And he started his chair. He had said his say. Now he lapsed into his peculiar and rather vacant apathy that Sherlock found so trying. In the wood, anyhow, he was determined not to argue.

The chair puffed slowly on, slowly surging into the forget-me-nots that rose up in the drive like milk froth, beyond the hazel shadows. Victor steered the middle course, where feet passing had kept a channel through the flowers.

They passed the narrow track to the hut. Thank heaven it was not wide enough for the chair: hardly wide enough for one person. The chair reached the bottom of the slope, and swerved round, to disappear. And Sherlock heard a low whistle behind him. He glanced sharply round: John was striding downhill towards him, his dog keeping behind him.

“Is Sir Victor going to the cottage?” he asked, looking into Sherlock’s eyes.

“No, only to the well.”

“Ah! Good! Then I can keep out of sight. But I shall see you tonight. I shall wait for you at the park-gate about ten.”

“Yes,” Sherlock murmured, softly.

They heard the noise of Victor's horn, tooting for his husband. John's face flickered with a little grimace, and with his hand he softly brushed his lover’s cheek.  Sherlock turned his head so that he could kiss the man’s fingers, then he started running down the hill. He found Victor slowly mounting to the spring, which was halfway up the slope of the dark larch-wood. He was there by the time she caught him up.

“She did that all right,” he said, referring to the chair.

Sherlock looked at the great grey leaves of burdock that grew out ghostly from the edge of the larch-wood. The people call it Robin Hood's Rhubarb. How silent and gloomy it seemed by the well.

They started on the return journey, Victor jolting cautiously downhill. They came to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned to the right, and after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where bluebells stood in the light.

The chair nosed her way up unevenly, till she came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled, jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped

“Do you mind putting a stone under the wheel?”

Sherlock found a stone, and they waited. After a while Victor started his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered like a sick thing, with curious noises.

“If I could only get out and look at the damned thing!” he said, exasperated. And he sounded the horn stridently. “Perhaps Watson can see what's wrong.”

John appeared directly, striding inquiringly round the corner. He saluted.

“Do you know anything about motors?” asked Victor sharply.

“I am afraid I don't. Has she gone wrong?”

“Apparently!” snapped Victor.

The man crouched solicitously by the wheel, and peered at the little engine.

“Doesn't seem anything broken,” he said. And he stood up, pushing back his hat from his forehead, rubbing his brow and apparently studying.

“I don't suppose you can do anything,” said Victor. He started his engine, then put her in gear. She would not move.

“If I give her a push, she'll do it,” said John, going behind.

“Keep off!” snapped Victor. “She'll do it by herself.”

“But Victor!” put in Sherlock from the bank, “you know it's too much for her. Why are you so obstinate!”

Victor was pale with anger. He jabbed at the levers. The chair gave a sort of jolt, reeled on a few more yards, and came to her end amid a patch of bluebells.

“She's done!” said John. “Not power enough.”

“Do you mind pushing her home, Watson!” Victor said in a cool superior tone.

“Of course, Sir Victor! Do you want me to push that chair?”

“If you please.”

John stepped up to it: but this time it was without effect. The brake was jammed. They poked and pulled, and John took off his gun and his coat once more. And now Victor said not a word. At last John heaved the back of the chair off the ground and, with an instantaneous push of his foot, tried to loosen the wheels. He failed, the chair sank. Victor was clutching the sides. John gasped with the weight.

“Don't do it!” cried Sherlock to him.

“If you'll pull the wheel that way, so!” John said to him, showing him how.

“No! You mustn't lift it! You'll strain yourself,” Sherlock said, flushed now with anger.

But John looked into his eyes and nodded. And he had to go and take hold of the wheel, ready. They heaved and tugged, and the chair reeled.

“For God's sake!” cried Victor in terror.

But it was all right, and the brake was off. John put a stone under the wheel, and went to sit on the bank, his heart beating wildly and his face white with the effort.

Sherlock looked at him, and almost cried with anger. There was a pause and a dead silence.

“Have you hurt yourself?” Sherlock asked, going to him.

“No. No! It’s just my shoulder, it’s nothing!” He turned away almost angrily.

There was dead silence. The back of Victor's fair head did not move. Even the dog stood motionless. The sky had clouded over.

“That war injury took a lot out of me,” John said.

He rose, and again picked up his coat, slinging it through the handle of the chair.

“Are you ready, then, Sir Victor?”

“When you are!”

“I'm going to push too!” Sherlock said.

Together, they began to shove and the chair went faster.

“Are you sure you've not hurt yourself?” Sherlock said fiercely.

John shook his head.

Sherlock looked at his smallish, alive hand, browned by the weather. It was the hand that caressed him. John felt his limbs revive. Shoving with his left hand, he laid his right on the younger man’s white wrist, softly enfolding it, with a caress. And the flame of strength went down his back and his loins, reviving him. Sherlock bent suddenly and kissed his hand. Meanwhile the back of Victor's head was held sleek and motionless, just in front of them.

At the top of the hill they rested, and Sherlock was glad to let go. He had had fugitive dreams of friendship between these two men: one her husband, the other his lover. Now he saw the screaming absurdity of her dreams. The two males were as hostile as fire and water. They mutually exterminated one another. And he realized for the first time what a queer subtle thing hate is. For the first time, he had consciously and definitely hated Victor, with vivid hate: as if he ought to be obliterated from the face of the earth. And it was strange, how free and full of life it made him feel, to hate Victor and to admit it fully: “Now I've hated him, I shall never be able to go on living with him,” came the thought into his mind.

Both he and John wiped the sweat from their faces when they came to the top. It was curious, but this bit of work together had brought them even closer than they had been before.

“Thanks so much, Watson,” said Victor, when they were at the house door.

“Sir Victor,” Watson saluted, slung into his coat, looked at Sherlock and was gone. Sherlock, furious, went upstairs.

He made his plans for the night, and determined to get Victor off his mind. He didn't want to hate him, didn't want to be mixed up very intimately with him in any sort of feeling.

After dinner, Sherlock went upstairs as soon as possible, and went to bed quite early. But at half past nine he got up, and went outside to listen. There was no sound. He slipped on his blue silk dressing-gown and went downstairs. Victor and Mrs Donovan were playing cards, gambling. They would probably go on until midnight.

Sherlock returned to his room, put on his greatcoat and his shoes and he was ready. If he met anybody, he was just going out for a few minutes. The only danger was that someone should go into his room during the night. But that was most unlikely: not one chance in a hundred.

He slipped out silently and unseen. There was a half-moon shining, enough to make a little light in the world, not enough to show him up in his dark-blue coat. He walked quickly across the park, in the thrill of the assignation and with a certain anger and rebellion burning in his heart. It was the right sort of heart to take to a love-meeting.

_À la guerre comme à la guerre_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: John and Sherlock spend the night together.  
> And... Sherlock is running naked in the rain. Yep.


	14. They Called Me the Hyacinth Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John spend the night together and frolic in the rain, among other things.
> 
> Sexy times, so mind the Explicit tag.
> 
> The chapter's title is a quote from an original version of the The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot (who afterwards changed boy to girl)

When Sherlock got near the park-gate, he heard the click of the latch. John was there, then, in the darkness, waiting for him.

“I was worried for you,” he said out of the dark. “Was everything all right?”

“Perfect,” Sherlock replied, and felt more than saw his hand being grasped and the knuckles being kissed, softly.

John shut the gate quietly after him, and made a spot of light on the dark ground, showing the pallid flowers still standing there open in the night. They went on hand in hand, in silence.

“Are you sure you didn't hurt yourself this morning with that chair?” Sherlock asked.

“No, no!”

“When you were shot, did that leave permanent harm? I saw your scar, but didn’t want to pry.”

“That’s nothing! But I had pneumonia afterwards, and it left my heart not so strong and the lungs not so elastic. But it always does that.”

“And you ought not to make violent physical efforts?”

“Not often.”

“Did you hate Victor?”

“Hate him, no! I've met too many like him to upset myself hating him. I know beforehand I don't care for his sort, and I let it go at that.”

“What is his sort?”

“You know better than I do. The sort of man with no balls.'

Sherlock pondered this.

“But is it a question of that?” he said, a little annoyed.

“You say a man's got no brain, when he's a fool: and no heart, when he's mean; and no stomach when he's a coward. And when he's got none of that spunky wild bit of a man in him, you say he's got no balls. When he's a sort of tame.”

Sherlock pondered this.

“And is Victor tame?” he asked.

“Tame, and nasty with it: like most such fellows.”

“And do you think I am not tame?”

“Not quite,” John replied, the smile apparent in his voice.

At length they came in view of the cottage.

John unlocked, and they went in, he bolting the door behind them. The kettle was singing by the red fire, there were cups on the table.

Sherlock sat in the wooden arm-chair by the fire. It was warm after the chill outside.

“Take off your coat and your shoes,” John said.

Sherlock sat with his socked feet on the bright steel fender. John took off his coat and hung it on the door.

“Shall you have tea or coffee to drink?” he asked.

“I don't want anything,” Sherlock replied, “sit down with me.”

John took off his heavy boots. Sherlock had turned from the fire. How bare the little room was! Yet over his head on the wall hung a hideous enlarged photograph of a young married couple: younger versions of John and Mary Watson.

“Why do you keep it? For sentimental reasons?” Sherlock asked, a cloud of annoyance descending over his face.

“I never look at it,” John replied.

“Why don't you take it down then?”

He twisted round again and looked at the enlarged photograph. It was framed in a brown-and-gilt frame, hideous. It showed a clean-shaven, alert, very young-looking man in a rather high collar and a somewhat plump, bold young woman with hair fluffed out and crimped, and wearing a dark satin blouse.

“Are you jealous?” John asked, his eyes bright with mirth. Sherlock didn’t reply, but he couldn’t meet his lover’s eyes.

John stood up on the chair, and lifted down the photograph. It left a big pale place on the greenish wall-paper.

“No use dusting it now,” he said.

“Let me look!” said Sherlock.

John did look indeed very clean-shaven and very clean altogether. But even in the photograph his eyes were alert and dauntless. Not unhappy, but hardly joyous.

“One never should keep these things,” said Sherlock.

“That, one shouldn't! One should never have them made!” John agreed, before putting the photo face down on the table.

“Why didn’t you get a divorce?”

“I don’t need to divorce her. She doesn’t ask for anything and we parted as friends, despite everything.”

“What about us? Wouldn’t you want to marry me one day, after everything is settled?”

John gazed at Sherlock fixedly, bewildered.

“Sir Victor will never let you go.”

“I told you he may have made other plans already, plans that don’t include me. In that case, will you divorce Mary?”

“Yes, in that case, I will,” he said, and Sherlock saw his jaw set. Inwardly, he exulted.

“I think I will have a cup of tea now,” he said.

John rose to make it. But his face was set.

As they sat at table Sherlock asked him:

“Why did you marry her? I know that you were hurt, but why marry a woman? Why not wait for another man to come along, someone you may have loved?”

John stared at Sherlock with unseeing eyes.

“I'll tell you,” he said. “The first boy I had, I began with when I was sixteen. He was a school-master's son: pretty, beautiful really. I was supposed to be a clever sort of young fellow from Sheffield Grammar School, with a bit of French and German, very much up aloft. He was the romantic sort that hated commonness. He egged me on to poetry and reading: in a way, he made a man of me. I read and I thought like a house on fire, for him. And I was a clerk, fuming with all the things I read. And about _everything_ I talked to him: but everything. We were the most literary-cultured couple in ten counties. I held forth with rapture to him, positively with rapture. I simply went up in smoke. And he adored me. The serpent in the grass was sex. He somehow didn't have any; at least, not where it's supposed to be. I got crazy. Then I said we'd got to be lovers. I talked him into it and in the end, he let me. I was excited, and he never wanted it. He just didn't want it. He adored me, he loved me to talk to him and kiss him: in that way he had a passion for me. But the other, he just didn't want. And there are lots of folks like him. So there we split. I left him. Then I took on with this boy I told you about; he had been a teacher, who had made a scandal by carrying on with a married man and driving him nearly out of his mind. He came to live in Sheffield after the fact. He was a soft, white-skinned, soft sort of a man, clever. And he was a demon. He loved everything about love, except the sex. Clinging, caressing, creeping into you in every way: he provoked me, but as to the sex itself, he just ground his teeth and sent out hate. He almost drove me insane with his manipulations. In the end, I had enough. Mary was a friend and she had always had a soft spot for me. She said we should try and have a family and I thought I might as well try, seeing as I could never get what I wanted. We were happy for a while, until the teacher – only he was no longer a teacher by then – came back and made my life hell again. But I am glad Mary found someone to look after her. The child is his, naturally.”

He broke off, pale in the face.

“And what is this Anderson man like?” asked Sherlock.

“A simpleton, but not a bad sort. He drinks too much and when he’s had one too many, he says and does foolish things.”

“What sort of things?”

“He boasts about things that never happened or agrees to any stupid endeavour; little things, nothing of importance.”

There was a silence. Sherlock looked pale, and his brows were sombre.

“And were you sorry when I came along?” he asked.

“I was sorry and I was glad.”

“And what are you now?”

“I'm sorry about complications and the ugliness and recrimination that are bound to come, sooner or later. But when I look at you, when I think of what you are to me, I’m more than glad, I’m triumphant even.”

They looked into each other’s eyes, and something powerful and final passed between them.

“We _are_ a couple of battered warriors,” said Sherlock.

“And here we are returning to the fray!' laughed John.

He looked up and saw Sherlock wide-eyed and lost. And as if a wind tossed him, John got up and hobbled over to his lover and took him in his arms, pressing him against his body, which somehow felt hurt right through. And there he held him, and there he remained.

His hands reached blindly down and felt for him, and felt under the dressing gown to where Sherlock was naked.

“You came out into the night wearing no underclothes!” he exclaimed, caressing the smooth, cool skin.  

“Don't be upset,” Sherlock said, smiling, “I washed before coming to see you and I didn’t want to dress up again. After all, I won’t need my clothes, will I?”

He looked with wide, steady eyes into John’s face. The man’s expression darkened, as his hand came up to his lover’s face; he traced the outline of the younger man’s lips with his thumb. Sherlock’s tongue came out to lick it, and his hazy eyes never left John’s half-lidded gaze.

They kissed as if the world were about to end: John’s fingers desperately clutching at Sherlock’s curls and stroking his flushed skin, while the younger man pulled his lover closer, offering more and more of himself, hungry for a firmer, more possessive touch.

They slid down to the hearthrug, and the fire crackled merrily, while shadows danced around them.

Sherlock’s dressing gown was open and partially off his shoulders, his hair was a wild tangle and his eyes shone cat-like in the semi-darkness.

John had never seen such an erotic sight in his life. He removed his clothes with the same efficient economy he’d practised in the army and placed them haphazard-like on the wooden chair.

“We have all night,” Sherlock murmured, “you said you would do it properly, when we had more time.”

John’s eyes roamed the magnificent topography of his lover’s aroused body and his own desire throbbed violently.

But before anything happened, he had to ask that one question, one that he’d been keeping inside for a while, perhaps a little wary of the answer.

“Would you maybe like to try it… the other way?”

Sherlock blinked, opened his mouth and closed it again.

“If you like, but I don’t…” he stammered.

John smiled and shook his head.

“I don’t care for doing it that way, but I would have given in to you, if you wanted it. I suspected you didn’t, but I wanted to be sure.”

“I loved it the other time, when you were inside me…” Sherlock whispered in John’s ear, letting his hand trail down his lover’s strong, muscled body.

“Let me get what we need,” John replied, stroking Sherlock’s chest, rubbing at a peaked nipple. “Let me go, before I lose my mind and have you this way,” he said raggedly, taking his lover’s leaking cock in his hand.

It was supposed to be just a tease, but Sherlock opened his legs invitingly and bowed his back. He pushed up into John’s fist, inviting him to move.

“Do you want to come off like this?”

“No… oh god… just… hold it tight, a little… just a little… ah, yes, ah,” he keened, as the small, tanned hand worked his foreskin up and down the glans, rubbing at the wet slit. John was spellbound by the sight, and soon he leaned down to lick away the dripping moisture.  Licking turned into suckling, an ecstatic combination of lips and tongue feasting on Sherlock’s cockhead.

“Stop, oh... god, yes…yes…” the younger man moaned, and he didn’t know what he wanted; John understood and let him go, with a pained groan.

“Next time,” he said, pressing his lips to Sherlock’s inner thigh.

“Yes,” was the breathless reply.

John came back with some provisions, which he lay down by his dazed lover: a blanket and a cushion, a jar of oil and a small, wet rag.

He spread the blanket out and placed the cushion on it.

“It may be easier if you are on your hands and….” John started to suggest, but Sherlock had already scrambled over the throw and placed his knees on the cushion.

He leaned down on his elbows, thus presenting his rounded buttocks fully to his lover. The fullness of his testicles was also on show, and John couldn’t resist taking them in his palm.

“Oh, my love, you are so beautiful,” he said, as he squeezed and pulled them softly.

Sherlock pushed into his hand and leaned down even further.

“Please, please,” he begged and even though he didn’t say what for, his lover understood.  He used the wet, soapy flannel to clean Sherlock’s most private place, from the socket of his loins down to the perineum. Sherlock shivered and shook, as the cool and rough fabric made his skin even more sensitive.

“Have this been done to you before?” John asked, hoarse.

“No, but I have wanted to… but never so much, never…and you?”

“I have done it only once before, but this is….different,” he said, mouthing at the velvety skin of his lover’s arse.

There were questions Sherlock wanted to ask, but words dissolved like tears in the rain as John’s hands parted his buttocks and his tongue made contact with his lover’s entrance. He let out a string of mewling cries and pleas, and John was emboldened by his reaction and sucked the furled ring into his mouth.

If at first his advances had been timid and guarded, they soon became voracious and unrelenting: his broad tongue lapped and teased, before forcing its way inside, with swift, hungry thrusts, and his lips suckled with devotion, making love to the tender flesh until it relaxed and welcomed the intrusion.

“I’m ready… oh, now, now, John,” Sherlock moaned, low and desperate, when he felt one second longer would have had him tearing his hair out to stop the drip-drip of maddening desire.

“Should I…” John croaked, his voice full of night and sex, and he touched a finger to the wet, reddened ring.

“You, I want all of you, inside me, please,” Sherlock cried. His entire body was threaded through with a low, persistent current of electricity that made his skin prickle and his muscles tremble. It was the ache of intoxication, the yearning for something so intensely that it tore at his bowels.

After a brief interlude that seem to encompass hours, John’s slicked penis inched its way in, too slowly for Sherlock, and the younger man pushed back, taking his lover by surprise so that before the latter could regain his bearings, his cock was buried deep where it was most wanted.   

“Yes, yes, oh so good, so good,” Sherlock chanted, and he circled his hips to better feel the girth of it.

“God, oh god, you… oh you, my love, my love,” John rambled on, lost as he was in that fevered bliss.

After a few short and sharp pushes, he grabbed Sherlock by the hips and started fucking into him with deep, vicious thrusts that punched the breath out his lover’s chest. He unsheathed himself almost to the tip then plunged back in, like a blade in butter, with the same cutting, unflinching determination.

When he felt Sherlock’s walls contracting and his keens turn into sobs, he reached out blindly for his lover’s cock, but his hand was batted away.

“No, no, not yet, no,” the younger man pleaded.

And John scooped him up and held him tight, so that Sherlock was sitting in his lap, impaled on his erection.

Sherlock threw his head back and John was all over him: one hand stroking his hair and face and the other caressing his stomach and squeezing his nipples, teeth nibbling at his neck.

The change of position meant a shift from simple pleasure to a more complex palette of sensations: Sherlock relished the needling pain in his nipples, the sting in his throat from John’s teeth, and above everything, the bliss that exploded like stars behind his eyes every time John stabbed at the sweet spot inside him.

He wanted bruises on his skin and aching in his insides, all of it and more, to prove the world he belonged to this man.

“You are mine, all mine,” John crooned, as if he’d read Sherlock’s mind, and his lover nodded fervently and bounced on his lap, seeking to reach the impossible boundaries of pleasure.

But even that had to come to an end, and it did as John plunged in deep one last time and finally, finally milked his lover’s cock with his tight, insistent fist.

Ropes of creamy ejaculate sprayed the rug and Sherlock keened and shook, while John held him fast against him, his own violent convulsions coming soon after.

They trembled with the force of their orgasms, their panting breath like sensual music in the still of the night. 

 

Afterwards, as they lay enveloped in a fresh blanket and in each other, they marvelled at the stroke of luck that had brought them together “Fancy that I am here!” Sherlock said, smiling.

“Fancy that we are here!” John echoed, softly, against his lover’s lips. The kisses they had spared during their frenzied coupling were being bestowed now, in the warm comfort of the afterglow.

“I love you,” Sherlock said, taking his breath from his lover’s lips.

“I love you, too.”

John held the flushed, angular face in his hands and showered it with soft kisses.

Sherlock closed his eyes and let out a contented sigh.

Mouth to mouth, they fell asleep.

 

Sherlock woke up to the distant rumble of thunder. He liked to witness the weather’s theatrics from the safe confines of a room. Next to him, John was still fast asleep. When he was warm and smoothed out, he looked younger and even more handsome.

As he felt his lover’s gaze upon him, John opened his eyes, awakening with the swiftness of the soldier.

“I’m thirsty,” he said, kissing the tip of Sherlock’s nose.

He slipped out of bed with his back to his lover, naked and golden and brawny, and went to the sink, stopping for a moment at the window, drawing the curtains and looking out. His back was broad and fine, the buttocks beautiful with an exquisite, delicate manliness, the back of the neck ruddy and delicate and yet strong.

There was an inward and outward strength in the fine body, Sherlock mused.

“You need to drink too,” John said, bringing the mug to his lover’s lips.

“We didn’t sleep for long, it’s still only midnight,” he said, kissing Sherlock’s throat as he swallowed.

The thunder had ceased outside, but the rain suddenly came striking down, with a last blench of lightning and mutter of departing storm. Sherlock was restless. He didn’t want to talk or think; he needed to feel, to overload his body with sensations. Despair was lurking at the fringes of his being; he had this foreboding that a tragedy was going to strike, and the reason was to be found in something John had said, but he couldn’t fathom what it was.  He ran to the door, opened it and looked at the straight heavy rain, like a steel curtain, and had a sudden desire to rush out into it, to rush away. In the greenish light, he was ivory coloured. He ran out with a wild laugh, holding up his face and spreading his arms, and running blurred in the rain with the eurhythmic dance movements he had learned when he was a child and loved ballet. He was a strange pallid figure lifting and falling, bending so the rain beat and glistened on his inky curls; he swayed and stooped, so that only the full buttocks were offered in a kind of homage towards his lover, repeating a wild ritual.

John laughed wryly, and throwing the blanket to one side, followed him into the hard slanting rain. Sherlock, his hair all wet and sticking to his head, turned his hot face and saw him. His changeling eyes blazed with excitement as he turned and ran fast, with a strange charging movement, out of the clearing and down the path, the wet boughs whipping him. John ran and saw nothing but the flattened black curls, the wet back leaning forward in flight, the rounded buttocks twinkling: a wonderful male nakedness in flight.

Sherlock was nearly at the wide path when John came up and flung his arm round his lover’s naked-wet middle. Sherlock gave a shriek and straightened himself and his chill flesh came up against John’s body. He pressed it all up against him, madly, and quickly became warm as flame, in contact. The rain streamed on them till they smoked. John gathered his lovely, heavy buttocks one in each hand and pressed them in towards him in a frenzy, quivering motionless in the rain. Then suddenly he tipped Sherlock up and fell with him to the ground, in the roaring silence of the rain; in the dark, the translucent whiteness of Sherlock’s face glowed like starlight. They were lying on a bed of hyacinths and their fragrance was as intoxicating as the sight of the younger man all spread out like a pagan offering.

“Sherlock, my love,” he said, and leaned down to devour the cool, wet lips.

“John, John, John,” the younger man moaned and his lover wanted to kiss and lick him all over, but he couldn’t bear to be separated from the enchantment of that mouth. Their limbs tangled, desperate to get closer than they’d ever been. They climaxed staring into each other’s eyes, unseeing yet dazed by the extreme clarity of their feelings.

“Come on, my darling,” John said, and they started running back to the hut. He ran straight and swift, but Sherlock came slower, stopping to gather a bunch of hyacinths.

When he came with his flowers, panting to the cottage, John had already rekindled the fire, and the twigs were crackling. Sherlock’s chest rose and fell, his hair was plastered down with rain, his face was flushed ruddy and his body glistened and trickled. Wide-eyed and breathless, he looked another creature.

John took an old sheet and rubbed him down, he standing like a child. He then rubbed himself. Sherlock ducked his head in the other end of the sheet, and towelled his wet curls.

“We're drying ourselves together on the same towel, we shall argue” John said.

Sherlock looked up for a moment, his hair a hopeless wild nest.

“No!” he said, his eyes wide. “It's not a towel, it's a sheet.” John’s mirth started like a soft giggle, but soon he was laughing out loud. Sherlock sniffed and frowned, but was unable to stay serious when John was so happy, so he soon joined in.

Still panting with their exertions, each wrapped in a blanket, but the front of the body open to the fire, they sat on a the rug side by side before the blaze, to get quiet. Sherlock soon dropped his blanket and kneeled on the clay hearth, holding his head to the fire, and shaking his curls to dry them. John was hypnotised by the beautiful curving drop of his lover’s back. He stroked Sherlock’s arse with his hand, subtly taking in the curves and the globe-fullness.

“You have the most beautiful arse I have ever seen,” he murmured.

All the while he spoke he exquisitely stroked it, till it seemed as if a slippery sort of fire came from it into his hands. Sherlock could not help a sudden snort of shy laughter.

He turned round and sat on John’s lap, clinging to him. 'Kiss me!' he whispered.

After a while, John reached to the table behind, and took up the bunch of hyacinths, still so wet that drops of rain fell on to them. He smiled wickedly and started putting flowers in Sherlock’s tangled hair.

“Don’t you look pretty!” he said and, when the younger man struck a pose like a model on the cover of a fashion magazine, he laughed so hard Sherlock almost slid off his lap.

“Do you know about the myth of Hyacinth?” he asked and John shook his head.

“He was a beautiful youth who caused a feud between Zephyrus and Apollo. Jealous that Hyacinth preferred Apollo, Zephyrus killed the youth. When he died, Apollo made a flower from his spilled blood.”

“I would never allow any spiteful god to get close to you,” John said, kissing Sherlock’s flower-decorated ear.

“I’m not a beautiful youth,” the younger man declared.

“That you are, my love. You are so very beautiful you take my breath away every time I look at you.”

Sherlock blushed, genuinely astonished at such devotion on John’s part.

“Will you tell me about your colonel?” he asked, quietly.

“What about him?”

“Weren’t you happy, when you were a lieutenant and an officer and a gentleman?'

“Happy? All right. I liked my Colonel.”

“Did you love him?”

“After a fashion.”

“And did he love you?”

“In a way.”

'Tell me about him.'

“He had risen from the ranks. He loved the army. And he had never married. He was older than me. He was a very intelligent man: and alone in the army, as such a man is: a passionate man in his way: and a very clever officer. I lived under his spell while I was with him. I sort of let him run my life. And I never regret it.'

Sherlock frowned at that, and a twinge of jealousy went through his heart, but still he wanted to know.

“And did you mind very much when he died?”

“I was as near death myself. But when I came to, I knew another part of me was finished. But then I had always known it would finish in death. All things do, as far as that goes.”

“You seem to have such a lot _behind_ you,” Sherlock said, sounding forlorn.

“It seems to me I've died once or twice already. Yet here I am, in for more trouble.”

John replied, and hugged Sherlock tightly to him, so tight that the flowers tumbled down, ending up on the younger man’s lap. John was fascinated by the sight of the vivid colours juxtaposed to his lover’s inky pubic hairs. He felt drunk with love for the young man in his arms. The past didn’t matter at all.

“The past doesn’t matter,” he repeated out loud. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Sherlock’s eyes opened wide and filled with wonder.

“So you will get a divorce?” he whispered and John nodded silently, as he kissed his lover’s flushed cheeks.

They were quiet for a while, lost in the perfect bliss of that moment.

“When I come back from London, I will tell Victor I must leave him. And you and I can go away. We may even go abroad for a while,” Sherlock said.

“You've never been to the Colonies, have you?” John asked.

“No! Have you?”

“I've been in India, and South Africa, and Egypt.”

“Why shouldn't we go to South Africa?”

“We might!” John said slowly.

“Or don't you want to?” he asked.

“I don't care. I don't much care what we do as long as we are together and I have some kind of occupation.”

“I will think of something, I promise.”

There was plenty to think about, but it was late and Sherlock really wanted to spend the rest of the night in his lover’s arms.

In bed, he nestled up to John, feeling enfolded and content, and they both went to sleep at once, fast in one sleep. And so they lay and never moved, till the sun rose over the wood and day was beginning.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the comments and kudos. If I don't reply is because I'm using the time to write the story instead. I promise I will reply to all of you! Thanks again and keep reading (and commenting).
> 
> Next: the mystery starts to unfold.


	15. Throbbing Between Two Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble begins, alas.  
> The chapter's title is taken from a verse of The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Sherlock woke up to the distant hooters of Stacks Gate for seven o'clock. It was Monday morning. He shivered a little, and John – who was already awake – held him close. He lay perfectly still in his lover’s arms, his soul washed transparent.

“You must get up, mustn't you?” John muttered.

“What time?” came Sherlock’s colourless voice.

“Seven-o'clock.”

“I suppose I must.” He was resenting as he always did, the compulsion from outside.

John sat up and looked blankly out of the window.

“You do love me, don't you?” Sherlock asked calmly.

His lover looked down at him.

“More than anything in the whole world.”

“I want you to keep me, not to let me go.”

John’s eyes seemed full of a warm, soft darkness that could not fade.

“When? Now?”

“Now in your heart. Then I want to come and live with you, always, soon.”

John didn’t speak, but with the same eyes darkened with another flame of consciousness, almost dream-like, he looked at Sherlock.

And softly, he laid his hand over the unaroused bud of his lover’s manhood, on the soft black curls that surrounded it, and he sat still and naked on the bed, his face aglow with love.

“Yes,” he replied, simply.

After a while, he reached for his shirt and put it on, dressed himself swiftly in silence, looked at his lover as he still lay naked and white and beautiful, and was gone. Sherlock heard him downstairs opening the door.

And still he lay musing, musing. It was very hard to go: to go out of John’s arms. He called from the foot of the stairs: “Half past seven!” Sherlock sighed, and got out of bed. The bare little room! Nothing in it at all but the small chest of drawers and the smallish bed. But the board floor was scrubbed clean. And in the corner by the window gable was a shelf with some books. He looked. There were books about medicine, books of travel, a volume about plants and their uses, another about the composition of the earth's core and the causes of earthquakes, a few novels and three books on India. John was a reader after all.

The sun fell on his naked limbs through the gable window. Outside he saw Flossie roaming round. It was a clear clean morning with birds flying and triumphantly singing. If only he could stay! If only they could make their own world!

John was washed and fresh, and the fire was burning. “Will you eat anything?” he said.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee.”

They drank in silence and soon it was time to go. They stood in the little front garden, looking at the dewy flowers, the grey bed of pinks in bud already.

“I would like to have all the rest of the world disappear,” Sherlock said, “and live with you here.”

“It won't disappear,” John said.

They went almost in silence through the lovely dewy wood, but they were together in a world of their own.

It was bitter to Sherlock to go on to Fansworth.

“I want soon to come and live with you altogether,” he said, and John kissed him softly on the lips, as he caressed his hair.

He got home quietly and unremarked, and went up to his room.

 

At breakfast, while Victor made plans with Mrs Donovan for a visit to the mines, Sherlock was lost in his reveries. He had no appetite, but tried to swallow a mouthful or two of poached eggs. He wanted to be strong and healthy in time for the battle that awaited him. Besides, he would soon be in London where he would be forced to meet Mycroft and he did not want to spend any of his precious time appeasing his meddlesome brother.

What he had not anticipated was that the cold rain and the exertions of the night before had induced the onset of a chill. He sneezed repeatedly and shuddered, attracting his husband’s attention.

“What happened to you,” Victor said, irritated by the interruption. “You were in good health last night.”

Sherlock’s first intention had been to pacify him, but his manner and tone grated on the younger man’s already perturbed nerves.

 “And what if I don't choose to tell you?” he said, inspecting a slice of toasted bread.

Victor looked at him with his eyes bulging, and yellow coming into the whites. It was very bad for him to get into these rages: Mrs Donovan had a weary time with him, for days after. Sherlock felt a sudden qualm.

“Nothing is the matter.”

His husband looked at him suspiciously.

“Look at your hair!” he said; “look at yourself!”

In truth, Sherlock had not had the heart to comb his curls or wear his customary mask of impassibility. John had made love to him on a bed of wild flowers and he couldn’t, he wouldn’t act as if nothing had happened.

“I ran out in the rain with no clothes on.”

Victor stared at him speechless.

“You must be mad!” he said.

“Why? To like a shower bath from the rain?”

He still stared at Sherlock in a dumbfounded way.

“And supposing anybody came,” he said.

“Who would come?”

“Who? Why, anybody!”

“No one was there or I wouldn’t have done it!”

He spoke with amazing nonchalance and Mrs Donovan – who guessed at the truth - looked on in sheer admiration. To think his Lordship could carry it off so naturally!

“And suppose someone came while you were running about in the rain with nothing on, like a maniac?”

“I suppose they’d have had the fright of their lives, and cleared out as fast as they could.”

Victor still stared at him transfixed. What he thought in his under-consciousness he would never know. His uppermost reaction was one of annoyance and displeasure: he no longer knew the man he had married and he wasn’t even sure he had ever known him.

“You'll be lucky if you've got off with only a cold and nothing worse.”

“Oh, I won’t die of it, don’t worry!” Sherlock bore himself rather like an offended monarch, and marched upstairs to his rooms. He spent the rest of the day in there, unable to find peace. His thoughts veered wildly from memories of his night with John to the missing laudanum, and always crashed against the ghost of that thought that lingered at the edge of his consciousness: something that had been said, a word, and expression, a contradiction, perhaps. He squeezed the pillow in frustration, his feverish face a study in impatient displeasure. As the evening slowly approached, he felt well enough to venture downstairs.

 

That night, Victor wanted to be nice to him. He was reading one of the latest scientific-religious books: he had a streak of religion in him and was principally concerned with the future of his own ego. It was like his habit to make conversation to Sherlock about some book, since the conversation between them had to be made, almost chemically. They had almost chemically to concoct it in their heads.

“What do you think of this, by the way?” he said, reaching for his book. “You'd have no need to cool your ardent body by running out in the rain, if only we have a few more aeons of evolution behind us. Ah, here it is! _The universe shows us two aspects: on one side it is physically wasting, on the other it is spiritually ascending_.”

Sherlock listened, expecting more. But Victor was waiting.

“And if it spiritually ascends,” Sherlock said, “what does it leave down below, in the place where its body used to be?”

“Take the man for what he means. _ascending_ is the opposite of his _wasting,_ I presume.”

“Spiritually blown out then!”

“No, but seriously, without joking: do you think there is anything in it?”

“Physically wasting?” Sherlock said. “Do you think the sun is smaller than it used to be? Do you think it was larger in the past?”

'Well, hear how he goes on: _The present type of order in the world has risen from an unimaginable part, and will find its grave in an unimaginable future. There remains the inexhaustive realm of abstract forms, and creativity with its shifting character ever determined afresh by its own creatures, and God, upon whose wisdom all forms of order depend_.”

Sherlock sat listening contemptuously.

“What a lot of stuff! Unimaginables, and types of order in graves, and realms of abstract forms, and creativity with a shifty character, and God mixed up with forms of order! Why, it's idiotic!”

“I think there is something in the idea that the universe is physically wasting and spiritually ascending.”

“Do you? Then let it ascend, so long as it leaves me safely and solidly physically here below.”

“Do you like your physique?” Victor asked.

“I suppose I do.” And through his mind went John’s words: _the most beautiful arse I have ever seen._

“I suppose you don’t take a supreme pleasure in the life of the mind.”

“Supreme pleasure?” Sherlock said, looking up at him. “There is surely a pleasure to be had from the mind, but it is nothing without the life of the body! Too many people, like your famous wind-machine, have only got minds tacked on to their physical corpses.”

Victor looked at him in wonder.

“The life of the body,” he said, “is just the life of the animals.”

“It’s not true! The human body is only just coming to real life. And it will be a lovely, lovely life in the lovely universe, the life of the human body.”

“My dear, you speak as if you were ushering it all in! Believe me, whatever God there is, he is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.”

“Why should I believe you, Victor, when I feel so very much the contrary?”

“And what has caused this extraordinary change in you? Running out stark naked in the rain, and playing Bacchante?”

“Yes, perhaps it was. It was exhilarating.”

“You caught cold and now you’re sick with it.”

“And alive!”

“Rather horrid to show it so plainly.”

“Then I'll hide it.”

Their conversation had come to an impasse, but thankfully Mrs Donovan was at hand to prevent any further unpleasantness.

In the afternoon she had accompanied Sir Victor to the pits, and he had been wrestling in spirit with the almost hopeless problems of getting out his coal in the most economical fashion and then selling it when he'd got it out. He knew he ought to find some way of _using_ it, or converting it, so that he needn't sell it, or needn't have the chagrin of failing to sell it. But if he made electric power, could he sell that or use it? And to convert into oil was as yet too costly and too elaborate. To keep industry alive there must be more industry, like a madness. It was a madness, and it required a madman to succeed in it. Well, he was a little mad. Sherlock thought so.

He talked to her of all his serious schemes, and Mrs Donovan listened in a kind of wonder, and let him talk.

And later every night they had taken up the habit of playing cards, gambling with sixpences. And again, in the gambling Victor was gone in a kind of unconsciousness, or blank intoxication, or intoxication of blankness, whatever it was. Sherlock could not bear to see him thus.

He and Mrs Donovan would gamble on till two and three in the morning, safely, and with strange lust. Mrs Donovan was caught in the lust as much as Victor: the more so, as she nearly always lost.

Sherlock left them deep in the throes of their discussions and went to bed.  It seemed to him that he and Victor were like boats navigating in opposite directions, their routes farther and farther apart.

 

The following morning was the nineteenth of May, a date Sherlock would always remember. His departure for London was to be on the twentieth, so only one more day and he wouldn’t have been present when tragedy struck.

Mrs Donovan was helping him to pack. Luckily, his indisposition had abated, reduced now to a mere stuffy nose and a light headache.

“It will be so good for your Lordship to have a change.”

“I think it will. You don't mind having Sir Victor on your hands alone for a time, do you?”

“Oh no! I can manage him quite all right. I mean, I can do all he needs me to do. Don't you think he's better than he used to be?”

“Oh much! You do wonders with him.”

“But men are all alike: just babies, and you have to flatter them and wheedle them and let them think they're having their own way. Don't you find it so, my Lord?'

“I'm afraid I haven't much experience.”

Sherlock paused in his occupation.

“Even your husband, did you have to manage him, and wheedle him like a baby? He was never the lord and master thing?” he asked, looking at the woman.

Mrs Donovan paused too.

“Not exactly….There'd be a look in his eyes sometimes, and then I knew _I'd_ got to give in. I knew when I could go no further with him, and then I gave in.”

“And what if you had held out against him?”

“Oh, I don't know, I never did. You see, I never wanted to break what was between us.”

“And that's how you are with all your patients or just with Sir Victor?” asked Sherlock.

'Oh, I’m really fond of Sir Victor, if you don’t mind me saying. But once you've _really_ cared, like I did for Ted, I doubt that you can ever really care again.”

These words frightened Sherlock. He thought of John and his man, the one who had driven him to leave his wife and his country.

“Do you think one can only care once?” he asked.

“Or never. Most folks never care, never begin to. They don't know what it means. But when I see someone as cares, my heart stands still for them.”

Sherlock pondered this. He began again to have some misgiving about going away. After all, was he not giving John man the go-by, if only for a short time? And he knew it. That's why he had been so passionate,

As they resumed their tasks, the door suddenly sprang open and Betts, the housekeeper, rushed in, addressing them in breathless alarm.

“Apologies your Lordship, but Mrs Flint is at the door to see Sir Victor, but he’s taking his mid-morning nap and I didn’t know…”

Sherlock had never seen Betts so perturbed. She was a woman seemingly carved out of shabby brownstone, spare and grey, with never a hair or a word out of place.

“What is the matter? Has anything happened to Redbeard?” he asked, as Mrs Donovan moved close to Betts, concerned that she might faint as she had blanched whiter than chalk.

“Funny you should say that, my Lord, as it was the dog as found it. Or him, I should say. Never quite sure if a dead ‘un is a ‘he’ or an ‘it’.”

“Please explain yourself, Betts; you are scaring us!” Mrs Donovan said, wringing her hands with impatience.

“Mrs Flint says there’s a man lying dead by John’s Well.”

Sherlock’s heart jumped in his throat and he had to reach for the mirror frame to stay upright.

“Whose body?” he said, in a strangled voice.

“She couldn’t say. She was too scared to look properly, can’t say I blame her. It seems the fellow is a short, scrawny one, in collier’s garb.”

No one in their right mind could ever describe John as scrawny or mistake his clothes - as plain as they were - for those of a miner.

Still in his dressing gown, Sherlock strode down the stairs, blue silk billowing behind him like a king’s cape, and was greeted by the loud bark of a dog.

“Redbeard, come here boy!” he cried out, and the animal jumped around him, happy and evidently excited by his central role in the drama.

“Your Lordship, I’m sorry to trouble you, but what could I do? Luke is at the market, and I was trying to mend the fence down by the coops, when the dog jumped over the netting and galloped away like a pony, didn’t you boy? ‘Twas a fair hike, but I finally got to him down at the Well. And that’s when I saw him. Such a fright it gave me, I almost had one of my turns,” she said and looked at Mrs Donovan, who nodded in understanding.

They were all standing in the hall when suddenly they heard the metallic noise of Victor’s chair and the baronet made his disgruntled entrance.

“What is matter? Why are you all standing there confabulating? What mischief are you planning?” he said. He was adopting the slightly paternalistic, sarcastic role of high priest of the land that his husband found exasperating.

“Mrs Flint found the body of a man by John’s Well. She couldn’t ascertain his identity, but it’s likely a collier.”

He saw his husband whiten at the crudity of his statement. Despite all his talk of spiritual superiority, he still was unwilling to face unpalatable truths.

“I’ll go to the Well with Mrs Flint and call on Crawford after that. Or perhaps you could send word to him. Come on Redbeard, let’s go, boy,” Sherlock said. Crawford was the local police constable, a tall, red-faced man Sherlock had met once or twice down at the village.  Sherlock was about to open the front door when his husband called after him.

“You’re not running out in your dressing gown! What will people think? Besides, I should be the one to go; this man died on my land, after all! Mrs Donovan, would you please help me,” he demanded, and the woman nodded, speechless.

Mrs Flint was looking at them with the air of someone nosing a good scandal. She belonged to sturdy country stock and no amount of shock would ever cow her into submission for long. Sherlock saw the malicious glint in her eyes, but didn’t care. He needed to know the identity of the dead man. He glared at Victor, who appeared to turn yellow from anger, but stayed silent. Sherlock knew how much it cost him, but Victor had a reputation to uphold and he wouldn’t lower himself in front of someone he deemed inferior. To appease him a little, Sherlock wound a silk scarf round his neck, and the four of them set out on their grim expedition.

Thankfully, as they approached the hut, they found the door locked and no sign of the keeper’s presence. Sherlock had been worried that John would be there. He didn’t mind to show his feelings openly, but the moment was inopportune and could cause his lover great embarrassment and even pain. To see him with Victor, after the night they had shared!

The sky was overcast and the spring didn’t gleam as merrily as it had that day when he’d heard the sound of hammering. How far those days seemed, and yet not a month had passed. His feelings had then been confused, his mind hazy, but now his purpose was clear, he thought, looking at the modest hut with a full heart, and a determined mind.

Victor paid him no attention, intent as he was in instructing Mrs Donovan on the best paths to take and which points to avoid, worried as he was of causing damage to his wheel-chair.

Mrs Flint walked ahead with her dog, both creatures scenting the air in excitement and curiosity.

 

The man was lying, prone, by the spring. His modest clothes were partly wet, but his head was resting on a clump of celandines. His mousy hair was oily and long enough to cover the collar of his crumpled shirt. He wore a brown jacket and a pair of rough cotton trousers: both were muddy and creased, but Sherlock didn’t notice any tear in the fabric.

“Can you tell who he is?” Victor asked, and Sherlock leaned down and plucked the flowers that were shading the man’s face. His skin had a bluish tinge and his round eyes were open as if in disbelief, his pupils constricted.

A rat-faced individual, Sherlock thought uncharitably, and was about to admit his ignorance, when the voice of Mrs Donovan rang out, cool and clear as a bell.

“Why, that’s Phil Anderson, Mary Watson’s man!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the investigation starts and Mycroft meets John.


	16. The Clays of A Cold Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The investigation starts (sort of) and Mycroft meets John
> 
> The title of this chapter is a verse from the poem Futility by Wilfred Owen
> 
> Disclaimer: my knowledge of police procedures in 1920's England has been mainly gleaned from Agatha Christie's novels, so, please, kindly suspend your disbelief on this matter. Same goes for the medical evidence, as I am not a pathologist.

The sky had turned a livid shade of grey; it wouldn’t be long before the rain started pelting down on them, Sherlock thought. How different from the pagan and dreamy sensations that had compelled him to run out naked only the night before. Bleak reality had intruded into his tentative plans and scuppered the fragile order he had tried to impose on his life. He felt it collapse all around him, and his heart trembled with the shock of it. But he had to act fast, or he wouldn’t be able to take a closer look at the deceased man, an inspection he wanted to undertake in solitude.

Mrs Donovan was his chosen accomplice; he knew he could count on her solidarity, even though her motives were rather different from Sherlock’s.

“You should send word to Crawford and wait at Fansworth. The police will want to talk to you, for certain. Besides, you should not strain yourself unduly, especially now that you are already so overtaxed with the issue of the mines,” Sherlock said to Victor, looking straight into the nurse’s eyes. She nodded imperceptibly.

“His Lordship is right, Sir Victor. It won’t do for you to run yourself ragged, so to speak. Let the police do their work, no use being out here catching cold!”

It was obvious that Victor was only too willing to let them sway him: after the war, he’d acquired a profound distaste and understandable terror of death; his own narrow escape had modified his character in a quasi-alchemic transformation, and he’d become preternaturally averse to witnessing the decomposition of flesh.

“Will you be staying here?” he asked Sherlock.

“I think I should, don’t you? We wouldn’t want someone to come upon this by mischance and cause an even bigger fracas. Besides, it is appropriate someone from the manor should be present and who better than your husband?” Sherlock replied, straightening up to his full height, looking regal despite his outlandish attire.

Mrs Flint was trying to pacify Redbeard, who was madly circling the body, jumping and yapping as if he didn’t quite know what to do with himself.

“I think the police will want to talk to you too, eventually. Shall I inform them you will be at the farm?” Sherlock said to her, hoping she would acquiesce to the implied suggestion.

Mrs Flint was in no mood to cause problems, especially considering she’d been the one to stumble, so to speak, upon the poor dead man.

After a fair few attempts, she succeeded in pacifying the reluctant animal, and the two of them scurried downhill, homebound.

Sir Victor and Mrs Donovan left soon after, the noise of their chatter mingling with the clatter of the departing chair.

Sherlock drew a deep breath and tried to tame the cacophony of his thoughts. John would be dragged into the scandal, no matter how indifferent he had been to his wife’s carryings-on. The entire village knew that John had left Mary and they more than suspected the reason, but his name would be tainted by association. Sherlock didn’t care, he felt no revulsion to scandal, but he knew his lover would be severely injured by it, perhaps fatally so. Time was of the essence, then. The solution to the mystery had to be found soon, to prevent the wound from festering.

Unlike his husband, Sherlock was not particularly offended by death: he had a curiosity for it, an interest in the causes that lead to it, but felt no great dismay in its presence.

He knelt down and touched his finger to the cold skin of the man’s cheek. He shivered a little at the contact, but continued his inspection. There was a bruise on his neck, faintly visible just above his shirt collar. Sherlock hooked his finger inside and pushed the fabric down a few inches: the skin thus revealed was a map of discoloured bruises consistent with finger marks.

“He’s been strangled, hasn’t he?”

Sherlock had not heard John approach and the man’s nearness startled him into silence.

He was wearing his oilskin jacket and his gun was slung over his shoulder; his face was paler than usual, the tan showing the ashen underneath; his eyes were almost as dark as when he had been making love to Sherlock, but with no traces of tenderness.

The younger man saw the soldier in him, some hints of which he had already perceived during their more intimate exchanges.

“Yes, or at least that’s what it seems like. See the bruises here?”

John hunkered down and looked at the point Sherlock was indicating. He hummed in agreement, but seemed distracted by some other detail.

“His pupils are like pinpricks,” he said, and his lover gave him a dazzling smile.

“You noticed that,” he exclaimed, all but gleaming in pride and contentment.

“I told you I helped the army doctor in India. It was mostly gun wounds and the like, but there were also some… let’s say, unusual, cases too,” he said, leaning closer to the body and sniffing in the direction of his mouth.

“Come here, there’s a whiff of something, tell me if you smell it too.”

Sherlock complied and when he straightened up again his expression was a fine balance of alarm and excitement.

“Spicy-sweet, I smelled this exact scent a few days ago.”

“Your empty bottle of laudanum,” John whispered, turning even paler. He remained silent and still for a moment then an idea came into his head and he quickly moved to where the man’s hands were reposing on the grass.

“His fingernails are not broken. He kept them quite long and they are intact. He didn’t try to fight his aggressor. Taken by surprise or,”

“Or administered an opiate and killed afterwards,” Sherlock concluded.

“You are quite good at this,” John considered, gazing into his lover’s eyes with surprised admiration.

“You are not so bad yourself,” Sherlock replied, feeling suddenly rather naked under John’s piercing scrutiny. And the man had the uncanny ability to read his mind, or so it transpired from his next observation.

“You are making a habit of roaming the country in your bedroom attire. I’m not sure I approve of this lack of modesty,” he said, half-mockingly.

“This time I’m wearing my underclothes; I hope that makes up for my lapse in decorum. Unless it’s not etiquette you are worried about,” Sherlock replied, coquettishly. He was flirting with John while next to them lay the body of a strangled man: hardly appropriate, he thought. And yet he couldn’t suppress the surge of pure joy in his chest or the startling pulse of arousal that throbbed in his bowels at the idea that John shared those contrasting feelings with him. He could tell his lover wasn’t disgusted by his morbid curiosity or by his unseemly exhilaration. As a matter of fact, John was staring at him with unconcealed admiration and a quiet determination that Sherlock’s brain receptors were translating into pure sexual chemistry.

They exchanged a long, meaningful glance and when they looked away, both their faces were flushed and their breathing fast and shallow.

John cleared his throat and turned towards Fansworth Hall.

“Sir Victor left you here alone with a corpse?”

“He’s not the master of me, John. Not anymore,” Sherlock replied, and the implications of that statement lingered in the air between them.

“You didn’t seem surprised to see him lying here, dead,” he added, thinking of Mary Watson and how she could still be the mistress of John, if she refused to grant him a divorce.

“I was… I am. But when you have seen the things that I have, death doesn’t shock you quite the same way anymore. I’m sorry for Mary and the child more above all. They don’t deserve any more trouble in their lives. But we have to take the rough with the smooth, that’s the way of things.”

“I guess it is,” Sherlock murmured, and he felt a vice close around his heart and squeeze it tightly.

The clouds suddenly parted and a shaft of sunlight descended upon them, incongruous and revelatory. Life, as John had said, there’s no keeping clear of it. And death too, as it turned out.

 

Crawford arrived with the coroner – a podgy, be-spectacled man named Julius Peel – and Sherlock was duly dispatched back to Fansworth Hall with all the good grace and respect that behoved his title and position. He huffed and puffed, but in the end was forced to concede defeat. He walked away shaking his head and holding the silk scarf tight against his chest as Julius Caesar might have done after Brutus stabbed him. If John had still been present, he would have laughed at Sherlock’s “fit of pique” and the younger man would have scoffed, but relented once encircled by his lover’s strong arms.

To compound the misery of John’s absence, once he reached the manor he was greeted with the news that Mycroft had just arrived at Fansworth.

 

Sherlock mused that his brother had something in common with Redbeard: they both scented trouble and descended upon it with untimely glee. The comparison made him chortle and his brother arched his highbrows more in surprise than disapproval. He imagines I’m glad to see him, Sherlock thought, and the chortle devolved into a spell of coughing. Mycroft rolled his eyes and normal service was resumed.

In fact, Mycroft had not been au fait with the latest developments at Fansworth and his surprise visit was due to his certainty that Sherlock was hiding something from him; he was suspecting the secret to be of an addictive, intoxicating nature.

Like a Teutonic field-marshal, Mycroft intended to storm the citadel and bring his little brother to heel. After a brief and stunted conversation with Sir Victor, he and Sherlock went to the upstairs rooms to talk.

“But Mycroft!” said Sherlock, annoyed beyond measure. “I was about to leave for London and I would have, if this incident had not occurred. Why are you here?”

Mycroft fixed him with grey, inscrutable eyes. He seemed so calm and Sherlock was so often furious.

“Why, don’t you want me here?” he asked.

“Not particularly, no. You upset Victor and now more than ever he needs to stay calm.”

“Why, because of this man found dead on his land? Surely no one would suspect any of you! The man’s a collier, I gather. Surely some squalid squabble between miners is the most likely cause of his demise. It will be resolved before dinner, so we shall have something to discuss as we sip our liqueurs.”

Mycroft had not failed to notice how his brother bridled at his dismissal of the miners. Sherlock was no staunch defender of workers’ rights, so there must be another reason to his indignation. He sighed and put his hands to his face.

“You are _not_ having an affair with a miner!”

“What if I am? They are not different from us, they have arms and legs, same as you, and probably more heart than you have. Certainly more heart,” Sherlock blurted out.

“It’s not the dead man by any chance? No, you wouldn’t look so,” Mycroft paused, searching for the right word. “You wouldn’t look so glowing!” he finally exclaimed, distaste etched all over his countenance

“Well, he lives near here, but he’s not a miner. His name is John Watson and he’s the man I love. There!”

Mycroft bent his head in silence. Then he looked up.

“Do you want to tell me who he is?” he said.

“He's our game-keeper,” replied Sherlock, and he flushed vividly, like an insolent child.

“Sherlock!” said Mycroft, lifting his nose slightly with disgust: a motion he had from their mother.

“Oh, shut up! He’s a real man. And he understands me,” said Sherlock, trying to explain and finding it rather difficult.

Mycroft, like a pallid Sphinx, bowed his head and pondered. He was really violently angry. But he dared not show it, because Sherlock, taking after their father, would straight away become obstreperous and unmanageable.

It was true, Mycroft did not like Victor: his cool assurance that he was somebody! He thought Victor had made use of Sherlock shamefully and impudently. He had hoped his little brother _would_ leave him. But, being solid upper class, he loathed any 'lowering' of oneself or the family. He looked up at last.

“You'll regret it,” he said.

“I shan't,” cried Sherlock, flushed red. “He's quite exceptional. I _really_ love him.”

Mycroft still pondered.

“You'll get over him quite soon,” he said, “and live to be ashamed of yourself because of him.”

“I will never be ashamed of John! I will divorce Victor and marry him.”

 _“Sherlock”'_ said Mycroft, hard as a hammer-stroke, and pale with anger.

“I want to and I will. I should be fearfully proud to be his husband.”

It was no use talking to him, Mycroft mused.

“And doesn't Victor suspect?” he said.

“Oh no! Why should he?”

“I've no doubt you've given him plenty of occasion for suspicion,” said Mycroft.

“Not at all.”

“I want to meet him. Where does the man live?”

“In the cottage at the other end of the wood.”

“Is he a bachelor?”

“No, but he will get a divorce.”

“How old?”

“I don't know. Older than me.”

Mycroft became more angry at every reply, angry as their mother used to be, in a kind of paroxysm. But still he hid it.

On the strength of his anger, Mycroft warmed toward Victor.

After all, he had a mind. And if he had no sex, functionally, all the better: so much the less to quarrel about! Mycroft was wary of that sex business, where men became nasty, selfish little horrors. Sherlock really had less to put up with if he did but know it.

 

That evening, Sherlock agreed to take Mycroft to the cottage. His brother would not be swayed and anyway he imagined this way the ordeal would be over and he could concentrate on the other, more pressing issue.

The whole thing was utterly horrid for Mycroft, and he was almost too angry to talk. However, Sherlock _had_ to tell him something of the man's history.

“How would you like to be Mr Holmes Watson, instead of Lord Trevor?”

“I'd love it.”

There was nothing to be done with Sherlock. And anyhow, if the man had been a lieutenant in the army in India for four or five years, he must be more or less presentable. Apparently he had character. Mycroft began to relent a little.

“But you'll be through with him in a while,” he said, “and then you'll be ashamed of having been connected with him. One _can't_ mix up with the working people.”

“But you are such a socialist! You're always on the side of the working classes.”

“I may be on their side in a political crisis, but being on their side makes me know how impossible it is to mix one's life with theirs. Not out of snobbery, but just because the whole traditions are different.”

Mycroft had lived among the real political intellectuals, so he was disastrously unanswerable.

 

Sherlock almost wished John wouldn’t be at the cottage. But he saw a shadowy figure, and John opened the door.

“My brother is here and wants to make your acquaintance,” he said, defiantly.

John let them in, without uttering a word.

“This is my brother Mycroft. Mycroft! This is Mr John Watson.”

They shook hands, in silence.

The fire burned low and red in the grate. The table was set with one plate and one glass. Mycroft looked round the bare, cheerless room the he summoned his courage and looked at the man.

He was short but well built and, he had to admit, rather good-looking. John kept a quiet distance of his own, and seemed absolutely unwilling to speak.

“Do sit down, Mycroft,” said Sherlock.

“Can I make you tea or anything, or will you drink a glass of beer? It's moderately cool,” John offered.

“Beer!” said Mycroft, rather as one would say “poison”.

“Beer for me, please!” said Sherlock, with a mock sort of defiance. John looked at him and blinked. He took a blue jug and went to the scullery. When he came back with the beer, his face had changed again.

Sherlock sat down by the door, and Mycroft sat in his seat, with the back to the wall, against the window corner.

“That is his chair,” said Sherlock huffily. And Mycroft rose as if the chair had stung his posterior.

“Sit down, please. One chair is much like the other,” John said, with complete equanimity.

And he brought Mycroft a glass, and poured his beer first from the blue jug.

“I have nothing fancy to offer you, but you can partake of my dinner, if it pleases you.” He spoke with a curious calm assurance, as if he were the landlord of the Inn.

“What is there?” asked Sherlock.

“Boiled ham, cheese, pickled walnuts.”

“Yes,” said Sherlock, who usually ate nothing of the sort. “Won't you, Mycroft?”

Mycroft looked up at John.

“Why do you speak with a Yorkshire accent?” he asked.

“That's not Yorkshire, that's Derby.”

“Derby, then! You spoke natural English at first. It sounds a little affected,” said Mycroft.

“Does it?” He said and looked at him again, with a queer calculating distance. He went to the pantry for the food. He brought two more plates, and knives and forks. Then he said:

“Help yourselves!” He cut the bread then sat motionless. Mycroft felt, as Sherlock once used to, his power of silence and distance. He saw his smallish, tanned hand on the table. He was no simple working man, not he: he was acting! Acting!

“Yes,” he said, as he took a little cheese. “It would be more natural if you spoke to us in normal English.”

“Would it?” John said in the normal English. “Would it? Would anything that was said between you and me be quite natural, unless you said you wished me to hell before your brother ever saw me again: and unless I said something almost as unpleasant back again? Would anything else be natural?”

“Oh yes!” said Mycroft. “Just good manners would be quite natural.”

John began to laugh. “I'm weary of manners.”

Mycroft was frankly baffled and furiously annoyed. After all, this Watson man might show that he realized he was being honoured. Instead of which, with his play-acting and lordly airs, he seemed to think it was he who was conferring the honour. Just impudence! Poor misguided Sherlock, in this man's clutches!

The three ate in silence. Mycroft looked to see what his table-manners were like. He could not help realizing that John was instinctively as delicate and well-bred as him. And moreover, he had all the quiet self-contained assurance of the soldier. It would be very difficult to get the better of him.

“And do you really think,” he said, a little more humanly, “it's worth the risk.”

“Is what worth what risk?”

“This escapade with my brother.”

He flickered his irritating grin.

“Ask him.” Then he looked at Sherlock with such deep love in his eyes that the younger man was left speechless for a moment.

“I wish you would leave us alone, Mycroft,” he said, at last.

“Someone has to think about things. You've got to have some sort of continuity in your life. You can't just go making a mess.”

There was a moment's pause.

“Has continuity served you well in your life? You don’t seem that cheerful to me!”

“What right have you to speak like that to me?” said Mycroft.

“Right! What right have you to talk to me about my life? Leave folks to their own continuities.”

“My dear man, do you think I am concerned with you?” said Mycroft with a sneer.

“Aye, since you are more or less my brother-in-law.”

“Still far from it, I assure you.”

“Not that far, I assure _you_. I've got my own sort of continuity, don’t you worry! Good as yours, any day. And what Sherlock and I share you can’t even imagine. I can tell by the raw look of you.”

He was looking at Mycroft with an odd, flickering smile, faintly allusive and a tad arrogant.

“Men like you,'” the elder Holmes said, “ought to be segregated: justifying their own vulgarity and selfish lust.”

“Perhaps it's a mercy there's a few men left like me. But you deserve what you get: to be left severely alone.”

Mycroft had risen and gone to the door.

“I can find my way quite well alone,” he said.

“I doubt you can't,” John replied easily.

The two of them walked in ridiculous file down the lane again, in silence.

“All I meant,” Mycroft said now that he’d simmered down, “is that I doubt if you'll find it's been worth it, either of you!”

“One man's meat is another man's poison,” John said, out of the darkness. “But Sherlock is meat and drink to me. He’s the air in my lungs and the blood in my veins and I won’t let you or anyone else besmirch what is pure and beautiful to us. Goodnight, sir,” he said, and he opened the gate to let the other man out.

Mycroft had been impressed by his words, but hid his reaction.

“Goodnight, Mr Watson,” he said, and slowly walked back to the manor.

In the still of the night, an owl hooted.

 

 


	17. We Defy Augury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short one.
> 
> The chapter's title is a quote from Hamlet.
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting. It's my meat and drink.

When John opened the door of his cottage, he half-dreaded the conversation he was to have with Sherlock about his brother. He knew he had forgotten his manners and was about to admit as much, when he found himself at the receiving end of a passionate kiss.

His lover all but pinned him to the sturdy door and pressed the entire length of his lithe body against his.

Taken by surprise, John allowed him to take command of the kiss, but soon he regained control of it, pulling Sherlock’s head closer, burying a possessive hand in his hair, and curling the fingers of the other around the slender waist.

His tongue plunged deep into his lover’s mouth and Sherlock was keening and writhing against him. His unspoken demands were: take me, own me, keep me, don’t ever let me go. And John’s response was a clear, resounding “yes!”

“Yes, yes,” he said, when they parted, breathless like after a long run.

Sherlock’s eyes were dark and shiny and he looked naked despite being fully dressed.

“I want you,” he stated, simply.

“Is there time?” John asked, but he was already undressing to save some precious instants.

“Only a little, but I want to feel your skin on mine, please,” he whispered, as he unbuttoned his shirt and trousers.

They lay down on their preferred spot on the rug in front of the crackling fire, and when John covered Sherlock’s body with his own, the younger man had to stifle a scream. His skin was highly sensitised and every touch, rub, scratch or nip was magnified to a nearly unbearable pitch. He trembled, writhed and rutted against his lover’s body, wanting to become one with him, and at the same time desperate to affirm that he was still himself, Sherlock, with his flesh and blood and nerves and mind, and that he was offering all of that he was to John. The older man appeared to understand because his lovemaking became gentle, almost reverent: he kept his eyes fixed on Sherlock and caressed every inch of him he could reach. Their crises came as they were mouth to mouth and groin to groin, and their combined emissions joined one to the other much like blood would have in a tribal oath.

 

As John cleaned him up and helped him dress, Sherlock made his excuses for Mycroft’s behaviour.

“His bark is often worse than his bite. He pretends to despise things that he doesn’t understand.”

“I didn’t really take offence for what he said. He’s right on many accounts, or he would be if it weren’t us he was talking about. There’s no putting us inside his neat boxes, we are beyond classification.”

Sherlock stopped mid-gesture and turned to look at John with an expression of pure, childish delight.

“We are, aren’t we? He can’t know us, because there’s never been anyone like us. We defy augury.”

“I certainly hope so, my love,” John said, as he smoothed down the lapels of Sherlock’s jacket. “What did the police said? Have they found the culprit?” he asked, frowning.

“No, they haven’t, but that’s all I know. Crawford and the coroner, that little man with glasses and a paunch, sent me packing. And Mycroft showed up, so I didn’t have time to have a proper conversation with Victor. I will question him as soon as I get back.”

“Did you tell Crawford about the laudanum and the fingernails?”

“I tried, but he didn’t let me speak. It was maddening, John! I was bursting with information and that red-faced simpleton looked right through me, as if I were invisible.”

“But you are the baronet’s husband. They should listen to you,” John exclaimed, shaking his head.

“A husband is nothing more than a kept thing according to them,” Sherlock replied, bitterly.

“You won’t be a kept thing when you are my husband,” John murmured, turning away.

“We’ll be partners, won’t we?” he suggested, taking his lover’s hand and lacing their fingers together.

John bent down to kiss Sherlock’s wrist, as if to seal their compact.

 

When he arrived at Fansworth, Sherlock found Mycroft in conversation with Victor. From the tone of their voices and their general demeanour, it was clear they had been arguing. Unfortunately, Mrs Donovan had been sent away, as his brother would not allow a “servant” to be present in the library when they – as he put it – sipped their liqueurs. Naturally, even a woman of their class wouldn’t have been allowed in that sanctum sanctorum, but Sherlock was sure that was not Mycroft’s genuine reason.

“I gather the culprit has not been found, dear brother,” he said, while pouring an inch of Bénédictine into a cordial glass.

Mycroft looked him up and down and frowned, tightening his lips into a thin, disapproving line. He had obviously deduced what had happened in the cottage after he’d left and Sherlock responded by raising his eyebrows and smirking.

“You should not jest about such grave things, Sherlock! Your brother is trying to convince me to involve Scotland Yard in the investigations, but I have the utmost confidence in the local police. These chaps are perfectly sound; absolutely top fellows! Crawford will be reporting to Inspector Brent. His family have been in law enforcement for as long as the Trevors have owned this land.”

“But surely, dear Victor, if the murderer is not found soon, the scandal…” Mycroft insisted, and Sir Victor’s chest seemed to inflate like a dirigible, while his yellowing eyes did their utmost to pop out of their sockets.

“What scandal! They can’t attach any of the blame to us, just because that poor man was unfortunate enough to get himself strangled on our land!”

And Mycroft, who had concurred with that precise viewpoint only recently, fought against it with infuriating, calm disdain.

“You just informed me that the victim was the… paramour of Mrs Mary Watson, whose husband is your game-keeper. The first person they will suspect is precisely the jealous husband. It is tediously predictable, but that’s what the police will think.”

“But he has no motive! He left his wife and they are in good terms. He’s given his name to the girl and even gives them money,” Sherlock exclaimed, and both men looked at him with disapproval.

“Well, you told me that!” he said to his husband, petulantly.

“I didn’t certainly expect you to commit it to memory like the Lord’s Prayer!” Victor retorted, in a shrill voice.

“What did the coroner say?” Sherlock asked, in order to appease his husband.

Victor looked down at his hand as it grasped the chair’s armrest.

“From his preliminary observations, all he could evince was that the man had been strangled a few hours before he was found, during the night.”

“Did he say whether the man had been sedated prior to strangulation?”

“Why would he say that?” asked Mycroft, narrowing his eyes.

Sherlock did not reply, but he saw that his husband had understood the gist of his question and didn’t intend to discuss it in front of a third party.

“Dear brother, I’m sure you must be exhausted after that long drive. Your usual room has been prepared. I bid you farewell,” he said, pointedly, and Mycroft had no choice but retire to his quarters after saying goodnight to his host.

Sherlock poured some liqueur in his husband’s glass, and waited as the man drank it in one gulp.

 “I smelled his mouth this morning. There was a distinct whiff of laudanum coming from it.”

Victor’s hands trembled a little, but he hid his fear in the customary way, by becoming bullish.

“How would you know? You’re neither surgeon nor apothecary!”

 Sherlock had never told his husband about his sojourn in Paris, because their intimacy had never been complete, but he decided he should partly own up to his past, if it meant his words would be given some credence.

“Before you and I met, my parents sent me to Paris. I made some friends who were rather keen on sampling what the French capital had to offer. We dabbled in more than a few unsavoury substances, opium being one of them. I know what laudanum smells like, believe me.”

Victor’s mouth opened and closed several times, and his eyes told an eloquent story of distaste and regret.

“You were a dope fiend! Well, you certainly kept that from me! And your brother, with all his airs of superiority, he knew that too, I bet! What else are you hiding from me, I wonder?” he shouted, a vein throbbing in his pale forehead.

Sherlock was sorely tempted to unburden his soul of the entirety of his past and present sins, but he thought of John and kept his mouth sealed.

“I’m not hiding anything you’d want to hear. We both know the life of the body does not interest you, and as for the life of the spirit, it does no longer interest me, so you see, we have reached an impasse. As your husband, I will be at your side and face this ordeal with you, but you have to believe me when I tell you Anderson was drugged with laudanum!”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Victor said, ringing his bell for Mrs Donovan. “I’m tired, I want to go to bed. Besides, the mines require my undivided attention; I can’t let everything go to waste because of a dead collier!”

“I will relate my surmises to Inspector Brent,” Sherlock said, curtly.

“You will do no such thing! He will ask all manner of questions on why the theft wasn’t reported and the police will start sniffing around here. _In our home!_ It’s preposterous and I forbid you to do it. Besides, once the history of your past addiction becomes public knowledge, they will think you pilfered it for your own private use.”

Sherlock threw his head back with a gesture of regal scorn.

“I don’t _pilfer_! If I ever wanted to imbibe laudanum, I would do so by buying it with money from my own pocket. I am not your concubine, I am your husband!” he shouted, and the nurse, who had just made her appearance at the door, blushed and retreated.

“Perhaps not for long,” Victor murmured under his breath, and left the room under the tutelage of a sheepish Mrs Donovan. 

 

Later that night, Sherlock was unable to sleep. Once again he stripped naked and stood in front of the mirror, looking for signs of his lover’s enthusiasm.

There was a slight reddening on the skin of his stomach, where John’s chest hairs had rubbed, and a purplish bruise on his hip, the shape of the man’s thumb.

He sighed in delight and imagined more marks: a chain of bruises on his neck, for instance. He caressed along the width of his throat and dreamed of John’s mouth and teeth sucking and biting, demanding and vicious. He moaned at the intense desire that coursed through him. Resisting the temptation of solitary pleasure, he looked around the room and imagined John in it. Perhaps he could smuggle him in at night; perhaps even now! The mere idea was exhilarating! There was his bed, certainly, but also the furry rug by the fireplace, the large divan and the two armchairs: a veritable choice of love-making sites. The luxury of the furnishings juxtaposed to John’s rugged manliness: the contrast was excessively erotic. It wasn’t only the promise of carnality that Sherlock yearned for, but the afterwards too, the moments of quiet after the storm, their breaths mingling and the soft, tender words in between. Even the silences had their own singular quality and hue; they weren’t tense or empty like those he shared with Victor, but rather like conversations made manifest by the communion of their bodies. He nearly gave in to the compulsion of running out in search of John, when his thoughts played him a nasty trick.

He saw, in his mind’s eye, a morning in winter when he’d sat on that very same armchair and a man, a dark-haired man, had kneeled down at his feet and offered him his miserable version of love.

And as if by magic, all the pieces of the puzzle slotted into place and he saw the truth that had eluded him till then. And the truth brought him to his knees.

John had been in love with James Moriarty.

 

 


	18. Half-Sick of Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John talk about Moriarty
> 
> The chapter's title is taken from Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott.
> 
> I sort of quoted Roland Barthes at one point. Spot the quote ha ha

John had lied to him. 

How come Sherlock had not realised it immediately? Some part of his subconscious must have been aware, because he had been on the brink of telling John of his suspicions about the laudanum’s disappearance, but in the end he had held his peace.

His stupid brain had contributed to this debacle by playing hide-and-seek with the information he had been given, the stories he’d been told.

Sherlock felt as if he’d just been struck by lightning then dragged half-way through the woods by a wild stallion and thrown over onto a bed of thorns.

He sat in a daze, naked and shivering, in the witching hour, as the silence of the waning night hung over him like a shroud.

Like in a diorama, he watched the unfolding of the events that had brought him there: his infatuation with the Irishman, their unsatisfactory affair, the humiliation that terminated it. He saw John, felt the passion of his kisses and the warmth of his touch.

For a terrifying moment, he imagined John and Moriarty conspiring against him, laughing at his expense, as they continued their affair behind Sherlock’s back.

It was the darkest moment of his life, its lowest point.

As a boy, he had lost his mother and had been through a war in which many of his acquaintances had died or been maimed; as a boy, still, he had married Victor and started a new life in a hostile, unwieldy place.

But then he had met John, and he had experienced deep intimacy and erotic passion.

And now, as a man, he was suffering like never before.

Horrible thoughts came at him from every direction, like evil sprites. He remembered John’s voice, his words as they touched his body; for language is a skin and trembles with desire. And that desire was tainted now, betrayed by the double meanings and the lies.

As he looked at his reflection in the mirror, he saw what he had seen after John’s first kiss, but a thousand times worse: how pale and stunted his body was, how unmanly his countenance, how lacking he was in everything that made a man attractive.

He scratched the pallid expanse of his chest and stomach with his fingernails, again and again, until he nearly drew blood. His eyes were full of unshed tears, but there was fury in the line of his mouth and in the palpitations of his throat.

The rage he felt against himself, John and his bad fortune soon dissolved, leaving him spent, his mouth tasting of cinders and the ghosts of kisses.

He finally trudged to bed and went to sleep certain he would always feel that cold and alone.

 

But in that fitful sleep the dreams that came to him, weird as they were, threw a new light upon the events, rearranging them in a different pattern.

Sherlock dreamt of Moriarty, of his downtrodden act, his poor mongrel face and saw – oh, the horror of it – the skin peel back, like paper curling before a flame, and the real man emerge from beneath the ruins. In dreams, he saw the snarl on the obsequious mouth and the strength in the slender limbs. He heard the smooth, lilting tones of his voice as a deadly siren song, coming from his lips, curved in a smile, cut across his sullen face like a bloodied gash.

 

When he woke up, in the full, yellow light of a warm spring morning, he knew he had been wrong.

James Moriarty had toyed with him, and Sherlock pondered that he would have not fallen for the man’s dubious, rotten charms if his mind hadn’t been virtually unutilized for years.  How easily had he been corrupted and confused!

A dreamy, inexperienced man who had only ever dealt in half-shadows and intoxicated couplings: he knew little or nothing of the world that existed outside, the society of men who didn’t belong in any preordained category, but built themselves from scratch, choosing their own destiny.

 

In a way, Sherlock had admired Moriarty for being an outcast who had succeeded against all odds, but he was now wondering whether that success had not been plucked from the darkness. Perhaps his stories did not belong to him, but to one of his victims. Maybe he had ensnared a writer and stolen his muse.

And to think this evil man had corrupted and hurt John Watson: Sherlock could kill him for this alone.

 

He dressed carefully that morning, selecting his best silk shirt and linen suit; he was like a sovereign polishing his armour, getting ready for battle. His face wore the signs of his troubled night, but there was resolve in his eyes.

He had nearly failed John, but he wouldn’t do that again, not if his life depended upon it. There could be no partnership between them, if he allowed his past transgressions to pollute his present and the trust he owed to the man he loved.

 

“Where is Victor?” Sherlock asked his brother, who sitting at the breakfast table, fastidiously picking at an egg-white omelette and drinking tea.

“Good morning to you, little brother. Sit down and have something to eat. You are looking a tad peaky.”

“Au contraire, dear brother; I am quite determined to solve this murder before the police arrest the wrong person.”

“You mean before they arrest your paramour?”

Sherlock strode to the side-table and poured black coffee into a cup. He plopped three sugar cubes in it and stirred the mixture with a pensive air.

“You never told me about _your paramour._ Have things progressed any further, or is it still only a _friendship_?”

Mycroft disguised his embarrassment by daintily raising the cup of tea to his lips.

After a prolonged sip, he looked at his brother and seemed to come to a decision.

“Alright, Sherlock, let’s agree on a cease-fire, at least until this _mess_ has been tidied up. I am on your side, even though I don’t entirely agree with your choices. But you could have done a lot worse for yourself. In fact, you have. Speaking of which, your _husband_ is wrapped around Mrs Donovan’s finger. It’s quite distasteful to behold, like a bossy child with his mother,” he described, shuddering.

Sherlock allowed his lips to curve into a half-smile.

“Mrs Donovan has been invaluable to me.”

“I’m starting to see that. But no more of that, we have important things to discuss. Such as, for instance, the small matter of the sedative you suspect was administered to the dead collier.”

“Would you stop calling him that? The man had a name, Phil Anderson.”

“Don’t temporize, little brother. What do you know?”

Sherlock suspected his brother could help him, but he needed to speak with John and as things stood, there was a strong probability he might be arrested.

Mycroft understood and sighed, but Sherlock could tell he was mostly acting a part.

“If Victor comes out of his study, please inform him I have gone for a walk in the park.”

“Don’t stray too far, little brother.”

I’m sick of living in the shadows, Sherlock thought, as he walked swiftly in the direction of the park.

 

John was preparing the gin traps and at first he had not heard Sherlock approach. Flossie was dozing nearby, and the birds were chirping up, far up in the trees.

“You lied to me,” the younger man said. He had prepared an elaborate speech, filled with deductions and verbal acrobatics, but when confronted with the unflinching gaze of his lover, all pretensions dissolved.

“No, I have never lied to you, no,” John said, shaking his head, his eyes as limpid and blue as the Wedgwood-tinted sky above their heads.

“Come inside,” he said and guided his lover towards the hut; he stayed close but didn’t touch him.

They sat on the bench by the hearth and John looked into Sherlock’s eyes, waiting for him to explain his accusation.

“The first time you spoke of your lover you told me he wasn’t horrible, but the second, if I remember correctly, you said he was a demon, that he almost drove you insane. Both statements can’t be true, which means you have lied to me.”

John flushed and looked down at the pile of ashes in the fireplace.

“I didn’t want to admit my weakness. Not at first. But then you opened up to me, you offered me so much of yourself that I had to give the same to you. To keep anything back would have been a crime.”

Sherlock felt the warmth spreading from his lover’s body and wanted to be enveloped in it, but he knew the touch of him would be fatal. He had to go through with his interrogation, get all the poison out before the police made their appearance.

“And then you saw him here, when he visited Fansworth; as recently as a few weeks ago.”

“What? And why would he be at Fansworth? What would a man like him have to do with Sir Victor and you?”

Sherlock ignored the questions and forged ahead, trying to contain his desire to reach out and touch John’s hand.

“You must have at least heard his name bandied about by the servants. Gossip is their favourite occupation. James Moriarty: doesn’t it have a nice ring to it?”

“Aye, I knew of this gentleman, but I have never set eyes on him. It wouldn’t have made a scrap of difference, since his name is unknown to me.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened and his mouth was agape: he couldn’t have made a mistake, he was sure of being right.

“What was your lover called?”

John hesitated, but one look at Sherlock’s tense demeanour, and he made up his mind. He bore himself proudly, like one who has nothing to hide.

“His name was Richard Brook. As I said, he purported to be a gentleman, but he wasn’t one like you or Sir Victor.”

“And he was Irish.”

“That he was. He tried to disguise his accent, but I wouldn’t be fooled. At least not on that account,” he said, smiling bitterly.

“Could you describe him to me?”

John did as told and verbally painted an exact likeness of James Moriarty, Irishman and scoundrel.

“Yes, that is the very man. You said when you saw him again, after you married, that he was no longer a teacher. What was his occupation then?”

“I can’t say. He sent word that I should go to Sheffield to meet him and I didn’t dare ignore him lest he made his appearance in Tevershall.”

Sherlock felt a stab of pain go through him like a thunderbolt.

“You had relations with him then?” he asked, the words sticking in his throat. John’s lips blanched and he nodded, miserably.

“Not that you could really call it that. Compared to what we have – no, I shan’t do it. He wanted to taunt me with what I could no longer have, said he would never let me be. I had to get away from that devil, so I enlisted. But he never said what his profession was, except I saw his finery and you couldn’t buy that on a teacher’s wages.”

“You may have read his plays. I know that you like to read, I have seen your books at the cottage, in your bedroom.”

John smiled, and for the first time that day he seemed almost happy.

“Spying on me, were you? No, I do not enjoy plays unless they are being performed on a stage. I am quite partial to the occasional novel, but my preferences lie in the real world rather than the imaginary one.”

“You should converse with Victor; he’d have a lot to say about that, I assure you.”

John smiled and raised his arm intending to wrap it round his lover’s shoulders, when his expression darkened.

“You suspect him of having filched the laudanum. And I assume that as a fellow writer, he’s friends with your husband. Is he also your friend?”

In his anxiety and distress over John’s affair with Moriarty, Sherlock had completely overlooked his own involvement with the man. He knew he had to be honest, regardless of the cost to himself.

“We had a brief entanglement. It was of short duration and rather unpleasant. But for a while, I fancied myself in love with him. He wanted me to leave Victor for him. By the time he asked me to, I no longer felt anything. I was only a prize to him, a conquest on his route to success. The bitch-goddess, I used to name it. Little did I know how far-reaching his evil was.”

John had jumped up and was pacing the tiny room with quick, angry strides.

“To think of that rogue playing his unseemly tricks on you!” he spat out. “I was partly to blame for what befell me, for I knew what he was like and kept at it, in mindless hunger. But you… an innocent!”

“I am a married man and had my share of encounters, I’m hardly an innocent,” Sherlock protested, his eyes flashing in disdain.

John came up to him and put his hands to the younger man’s face, his warm breath caressing Sherlock’s lips.

“There is a something in you that will always be innocent. You trust with your entire body and when a man abuses that trust, he’s mortifying your flesh as well as your heart. When you came to me, you were ready for my touch, and time and again you have returned to me as white and unsullied as the first time. It is this precious quality in you that he was trying to injure; he wanted to burn the roots so that the plant wouldn’t grow anew. If he ever tries again, I will pluck the heart from his chest. I swear it to you, my love.”

Sherlock’s eyes opened wide, as fear and lust coursed through his being, battling for supremacy.

John bent down and kissed him soft and reverent, but as Sherlock surrendered to him, the sweetness turned into passion. Their tongued tangled in a sensual dance and it wasn’t long before Sherlock felt the encumbrance of his elegant attire. He fumbled with his shirt buttons, but John stayed his hand.

“I would take you now, you know I would,” he panted, as he took a step back. “But you shouldn’t be here when the police come.”

Sherlock shook his head and blinked, in an effort to clear his mind.

“They will be with Mary now and then they will come for you,” he agreed, and then “had it happened the night before, I would have been your alibi.”

Incredibly, John laughed. He was really quite splendid, Sherlock thought, bursting with pride.

“Aye, pity that poor sod didn’t die at a time to accommodate his Lordship’s wishes,” he joked and Sherlock could hardly contain a smile.

“This is a serious matter, John,” he said, taking his lover’s hand and pulling, forcing him to sit down.

“That I know. But I trust Mary will talk some sense into them. Will you tell them about your medicine cabinet?”

“I mean to, even though Victor is resolutely against it. He’s afraid my past misdeeds will come back to haunt us.”

“Perhaps he’s right. That devil may have counted on that too. Endanger your reputation. If I ever get my hands on that rascal,” John whispered, low and menacing.

“I was thinking that the bottle or the case may still retain his fingerprints. And when he was in my room, he grasped the arms of my chair,” he said, and averted his eyes as he remembered the occasion and his shame, afterwards. “It’s a rosewood frame and Betts is hardly thorough with her dusting.”

John smiled wickedly.

“Your Lordship is hard to please,” he said, squeezing his lover’s hand, “I hope I won’t incur my Lord’s displeasure with regards to lack of thoroughness.”

Sherlock’s eyes dusked and his cheeks flushed pink, and John held him tight to his chest, caressing his hair and shoulders.

“I will tell them about the fingerprints and about Moriarty. I don’t care about my reputation and Victor will have to swallow this cordial, like it or not,” he said, resting his cheek on John’s shoulder.

“He will learn about your affair with that wretch…is there no other way? The police are not incompetent; they are a sad lot as men, but they know their business.”

Sherlock snorted in disgust.

“What about your brother, what does he say?”

The younger man raised his head and looked at his lover, startled.

“My brother? Why should I ask him?”

“He seems the competent sort. And he clearly loves you, going by the way he insulted me,” John replied, smiling.

“I suspect him of harbouring a grand passion for a Scotland Yard inspector.”

“Well then, he’s not as bloodless as I judged him to be. Good for him, I say. Talk to him, Sherlock, before you do or say something you may regret.”

“I will never regret anything which concerns you,” Sherlock replied, tilting his chin up in defiance.

“But will you talk to him?” John insisted.

“Yes, I will, if you really want me to,” he relented.

In the moments that followed, they stayed in their close embrace and said nothing.

“You should go now.”

“I will be back soon; with good news, I hope.”

They exchanged a chaste kiss and went out into the mellow, fragrant spring air.

 

As he reached the park gate, Sherlock heard the faint rumble of the police motorcar in the distance. The sky was still blue and the birds were singing, but all that beauty was lost on him.

The shadows were closing in.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and commenting!


	19. An Inspector Calls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter Gregory Lestrade
> 
> The chapter's title refers to the famous play by J. B. Priestley

When Sherlock entered his husband’s study, he noticed that the atmosphere was electric with excitement and that Mycroft was oddly absent.

Mrs Donovan’s face was a study in contrasting emotions: one part of her was mirroring Victor’s manic and slightly malign elation, while the other was more sombre and apologetic.

“Sherlock, my darling, you can’t imagine what disciple of the Marquis de Sade our game-keeper is turning out to be: a veritable Jekyll and Hyde case. At Fansworth he paints the picture of a solitary and mealy-mouthed fellow, but he shows quite another face in the village, doesn’t he Mrs Donovan?”

Sherlock felt the blood drain from his face, but he tried to appear unconcerned. He walked as calmly as he could to the side-board and poured water into a tumbler, merely for show.

“What happened?” he said, in as casual a tone as he could muster.

“Mrs Weedon - that would be Mrs George Weedon, the butcher’s wife - she saw him, Watson that is, shout and scream at poor Anderson. I never believed her when she told me, but it seems she was not alone. Quite a few people heard them brawl, but didn’t pay them any mind. After all it was Watson that left his wife,” Mrs Donovan explained, addressing Sherlock’s back. He didn't dare turn around for fear he would give himself away.

“You haven’t heard the best part of the story, my dear. Since they couldn’t very well accuse him of being a spurned jealous husband, they searched elsewhere for the motive. It appears Anderson was spending more money than usual on his libations and it was our own John Watson who gave it to him,” Victor declared, manoeuvring his chair so that he was by his husband’s side, looking up at his profile.

The younger man felt compelled to return the unflinching stare. His jaw was set and his mouth parched.

“Why would he give Anderson money, when he was already helping Mary and the child?” he said, his voice sounding cold and strained.

“I didn’t put any faith in Bertha Weedon when she said her George had seen him with a Turkish fellow, because that man sees all manner of things when he’s on the ale or the gin, but the police believed it; a Turkish fellow of all people!” the nurse exclaimed, a truly baffled look on her face that matched the one on Sherlock’s.

Before he could ask further questions, Victor intervened, with a histrionic flair that his husband found sickening.

“Et voilà, Watson becomes Mr Hyde: they say Anderson was blackmailing him over an escapade our esteemed game-keeper had with a married gentleman. And the Turkish man is supposed to be a servant to said gentleman. One of the wretches was extorting money from his master and the other from Watson.”

Sherlock snorted in disbelief.

“But surely a game-keeper has no money to spare; why choose to blackmail him?”

Victor clicked his tongue at his husband in a disparaging manner, as if he were admonishing a naïve child.

“To men like Anderson a little is better than nothing, my dear.”

“And why would John Watson care about the scandal? He’s a single man and surely can do as he pleases.”

Mrs Donovan cast an approving glance at Sherlock, glad to see him fight back.

“Oh, I’m sure he goes about as usual, with his devil-may-care air, I care for nobody, no not I, if nobody cares for me! Nevertheless, I shrewdly suspect he feels like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail: though he makes a very good show of pretending the tin can isn't there.”

This is what my husband has become, Sherlock thought: the mouthpiece of Mrs Donovan’s village gossip; a sad state of things, indeed. Bold, unconventional Lieutenant Trevor had been transformed into a common scandalmonger.

“A man like Watson would have sent Anderson packing and to hell with the consequences,” Sherlock said, moving to the window and opening it a fraction to let in the fragrant air.

“And what do you know about our game-keeper aside from you have been told by us? You have hardly spoken two words to the man!”

Mrs Donovan intervened quickly, fearing the worst.

“His Lordship does have a point. John Watson is not the sort who cares one way or the other. Not the sort who gives money to shut a man’s mouth.”

“But that’s the point, my dear Mrs Donovan,” Victor affirmed, with a victorious smile. “He’s the sort who’d rather strangle a man than pay him for his silence.”

A providential knock at the door prevented Sherlock from telling his husband exactly what he thought of his surmises.

“May I have a word with my brother before lunchtime?”

Victor grimaced before nodding gracefully and instructing the nurse to accompany him to his quarters.

 

The Holmes brothers sat on either end of the large Chesterfield sofa, facing one another like duellists.

“I’m only telling you because John advised me to do so.”

Mycroft’s lips curved up in the minutest of smiles.

“He’s wiser than you, little brother.”

Sherlock smirked and proceeded to recount the entire story, including his own dismal part in it.

“I was here when Inspector Brent called and Victor was kind enough to allow me to be a party to their conversation.  According to him, the coroner has found no evidence of foul play except for the cause of death, which as we know already, is strangulation. I tried to insinuate they may not have been cognisant of all the facts, but he did not take too kindly to my suggestions.”

“He’s an idiot! What if we spoke to the coroner? Either way, I must tell Brent about Moriarty alias Richard Brook. There must be some connexion to this Turkish man they are implicating in the murder.”

Mycroft chewed his lower lip, seemingly lost in his muse.

“If you tell him, everything will come out into the open and it’s likely you will be considered Watson’s accomplice. Instead of providing help, you will be plunging him into an ever deeper inferno. He’s devoted to you; he won’t allow you to follow him in his disgrace.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened and his brows lifted in a show of comic astonishment.

“It was patently obvious in the way he acted and spoke that he is – for some unfathomable reason – enamoured with you. If you accuse Moriarty of having purloined the missing substance, you will have to confess your tryst with him or it won’t take long for the police to find out. If they are not complete halfwits, they will uncover your affair with Watson and it will become apparent that _you_ were the gentleman they were blackmailing. You have money of your own which you could have used to shut Anderson up. But when John found out, he had a violent argument with the man, trying to dissuade him. When he saw he couldn’t, he murdered him to silence him forever. The objection could be that you didn’t need to go to all that trouble to obtain laudanum if you didn’t mean to use it and why tell your husband if you wanted to keep it a secret. They might insinuate you tried to implicate an innocent, by dragging his name into a mess of your own making.”

“And what about this Turkish fellow, what is your theory on him?” Sherlock asked, irritated at his brother for having stated the situation so clearly.

“That is puzzling indeed. But in close communities, you will find, any divergence from the norm is given the first convenient name that comes to mind.”

There was something in what Mycroft had just said that stimulated the shadow of a memory in his brother, but unfortunately, when he tried to grasp it, it slipped away from him.

“I have to do something,” he said, “I can’t allow them to accuse an innocent man. Moriarty must be brought to justice. Why don’t you call your Yard Inspector? You could pretend we want to make his acquaintance socially.”

Mycroft’s cheeks reddened and his eyes flashed dangerously.

“I do not _pretend_ , little brother; I’m not a vaudeville performer or a stage actor! As if I hadn’t had my dose of mountebanks among the company our father used to entertain. Some of those so-called artists were unspeakable,” he shuddered.

Sherlock couldn’t help but chuckle at his brother’s fastidiousness.

“You seemed to like Duncan Forbes, for a while at least.”

Duncan Forbes was a figurative painter of some talent, who deeply admired Burne-Jones and had tried to no avail to convince young Mycroft to pose for him. The boy’s auburn hair and milky complexion had attracted the painter’s attention, but it was his acerbic wit that had conquered him.

“He was tolerable, I suppose. But let’s not change the subject. I will have a word with Inspector Lestrade about this Moriarty character. If he lives in London, any criminal enterprise he may have entertained would be within Scotland Yard’s jurisdiction.”

“He rents a house in Mayfair,” Sherlock explained, before adding “but we need to move fast or any trace of laudanum in the man’s body may disappear. I should find out more about that. I noticed a book on medicinal preparations in John’s bedroom.”

Mycroft sighed and shook his head. It had become a leitmotif of their relationship: when Sherlock spoke, his brother always expected the worst and was frequently rewarded with an even less palatable version than the one anticipated.

“You should not brag about that, little brother, or it may just be the additional ammunition the police are looking for. Well, I’ll motor to Uthwaite to use the telephone, since the village is out of the question.”

Sherlock accompanied his brother to his car and was about to ascend the stairs to his rooms, when he was stopped by Mrs Donovan.

“I wonder if I could have a word with your Lordship.”

Her tone was uncertain, but there was determination in her eyes.

Sherlock lead her to the small sitting room on the first floor where they took their places either side of the dainty brocade settee.

“I hope your Lordship doesn’t think that my being friends with Berta Weedon means that I believe John Watson has strangled that poor man. It’s true that the Mary’s man always had a temper, but he’s a good ‘un,” she blurted out, looking down at Sherlock’s elegantly shod feet.

“Perhaps if I could have a word with this Mrs Weedon,” he said, in a soft, hopeful tone. She raised her gaze then, and looked him in the eyes. A definite understanding passed between them. Astounding, Sherlock mused, how this woman had come to comprehend him better than his own husband. He realised that the intimacy he had shared with Victor had been fallacious and short-lived, and that there would be nowhere to go for them, as even a casual friendship would be impossible.

“Yes, my Lord, and perhaps if you don’t mind, I will be present too,” she suggested.

Of course, she was right, Sherlock thought. A woman of Bertha Weedon’s class may be spooked into silence by the presence of a titled gentleman.

“You will be most welcome,” he declared, clasping her hand in his.

“Sir Victor is slowly on the mend, my Lord. He may well make a partial recovery where it matters most… to a man,” she added, blushing a little.

Sherlock laughed and squeezed her shoulder.

“No one deserves more praise for it than you, my dear Mrs Donovan.”

And no one else but you will reap the rewards, he said to himself, while he was in his bedroom, dressing for lunch.

 

The afternoon went by in a sort of haze; the weather had suddenly turned sultry and the heat was tormenting Sherlock in ways he’d never experienced before. His mind craved at once stimulation and repose, while his body wanted firm caresses and voluptuous embraces.

More than anything, he desired to be locked inside John’s cottage, in the balmy, verdant seclusion of the woods, while his lover sucked the very life out of him.

Where those feelings had come from he didn’t know, nor was he aware of how deep-seated they had always been, only waiting for the right key to unlock them.

Mycroft returned from his errand and swiftly informed Sherlock and Victor to expect the visit of ‘a friend from London’ after dinner.

Sir Victor wanted nothing more than interrogate and tease his odious brother-in-law, but one look at the man silenced him; he spent the rest of the day napping and haranguing Mrs Donovan on the dangers of excessive libations on hot summer days.

 

“I won’t have any silly innuendo from you, little brother. Inspector Lestrade is here to help us, so keep your witticisms to yourself.”

“May at least know what his given name is? Or do you call him ‘inspector’ while in the throes of passion?” Sherlock quipped, inspecting his reflection in the mirror.

He was wearing black on black, a combination Victor disliked, but that he imagined John would appreciate. ‘Black cherries and cream,’ the older man had purred the first time they had kissed. Shrewdly, Sherlock had realised how such contrasts in texture and colour delighted his lover.  He meant to visit him later that evening and wanted to lay before him a veritable banquet of sensuality; a night that neither of them was going to forget, no matter how long their lives would be.

He didn’t care about the danger to himself, not when John’s freedom was in more serious peril.

“His name is Gregory and if memory serves, you always had a penchant for uniforms. Funnily, both your husband and your paramour have served in the war as lieutenants.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to utter a scathing retort but thought the better of it.

“Let’s hope your husband won’t regale us with tales of coal mining and the like,” Mycroft said, wincing at the thought.

“It is vastly more probable that he will try to propound his theories on the life of the spirit. He’s convinced the body will soon be made irrelevant by evolution.”

“It’s only natural he would think that and I wish he were right. The needs of the body can be an encumbrance,” the elder Holmes declared, fiddling with his already flawless tie.

“I’m looking forward to meet Inspector Gregory Lestrade,” Sherlock replied, leading his brother downstairs.

 

As it happened, neither of their hypotheses came to fruition. Victor was unusually silent, barely scraping together the basic crumbs of casual conversation. He was suffering the heat, Mrs Donovan explained, as she guided him to his rooms.

He made his excuses with good grace, but his eyelids were heavy from exhaustion.

“I hope your Inspector won’t mind the slight,” Sherlock said, as he served Mycroft a gin and tonic with plenty of ice. The night was warm and alive, nature having fully awakened from its demi-slumber.

“He doesn’t care for pomp and circumstance.”

“And yet he’s thrown in his lot with you,” Sherlock considered, sipping his drink.

“He's not a Whitechapel fishwife, brother dear. This abominable place had done you more harm than I imagined.”

They heard the rumble of an engine and soon after the ringing of the front door bell: Gregory Lestrade had arrived.

 

Sherlock couldn’t refrain from staring. Had he not been worried and distracted by thoughts of John, his gin would have been spilt all over the floor at the Inspector’s entrance.

He didn’t know what he had expected, but certainly not this chirpy and unsophisticated man.

At first, the irony of his brother picking a man so different from him was cause for mirth, but when he reflected upon his own choice of partner, the laughter died in Sherlock’s throat.  The idea of being at one with Mycroft was bound to suffocate any hilarity at its inception.

“So you are Sherlock then? You are different from what I’d imagined from Myke’s description. Oh, sorry, I’m forgetting my manners, your Lordship.”

Stifling a chuckle at the sobriquet and at his brother’s reaction to it, the younger Holmes proffered his hand toward the debonair Inspector.

“Sherlock, please. I hope you had a reasonably pleasant journey despite the heat. Let me offer you a glass of something refreshing.”

“I should refuse, but after all I’m not strictly on duty,” Lestrade replied, his large brown eyes sparkling and full of bonhomie.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the Inspector took out a small leather-bound notebook and quickly perused the scant information scribbled on it.

“James Moriarty’s record is clean and so is Richard Brook’s, I assume, since I didn’t find any trace of his present whereabouts. He seems to have disappeared after the war. He could have died in action, of course, but it is a notable fact nonetheless. If your opinion is to be trusted, and knowing your brother I’m inclined to do so, this fellow must be the slippery sort.”

Sherlock concurred, pensively.

“Yes, he must be. He gained my husband’s trust and mine; he seemed perfectly harmless. Did Mycroft inform you about the laudanum?”

“Briefly, yes. I could dust the bottle for fingerprints, but I would need Moriarty’s for comparison.”

“I may be able to help you. He may have handled a piece of furniture upstairs, in my room,” Sherlock said, trying not to show his embarrassment.

Lestrade’s eyes opened wide, but he did not pose the obvious question.

“Alright, tomorrow I will get my man on it. I brought my best sergeant down with me. We’re staying at the Rose & Crown.” He caught Mycroft’s pointed gaze and shrugged, a boyish gesture that belied his position and his greying hair.

“I have to tread softly around here; I don’t want to ruffle the feathers of the local chaps. They can be easily offended and quite rightly, too. I wouldn’t want some stranger intruding on my patch.”

“Will you talk to Inspector Brent? I tried my best to communicate my deductions to Constable Crawford, but to no avail. Anderson’s fingernails were rather long and intact. There were no indications that he’d struggled with his aggressor.”

Lestrade smiled pleasantly and winked at Mycroft, inducing a fit of coughing that greatly amused the younger Holmes.

“He’s not quite as green as you paint him,” the Inspector said, as he strode towards the door.

“Dear Inspector, please don’t leave on my account. I was intending to go for a walk in the park. I find I have a sudden craving for fresh air.”

“I’m sure I understand,” Lestrade said, shaking the younger man’s outstretched hand.

They agreed to reconvene on the following day, and Sherlock walked out into the enchanted night.

The darkness soon engulfed him in its bewitching embrace, velvety and secretive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and leaving kudos and comments!!!!
> 
> Next: Sherlock and John have a night to remember
> 
> "And The Night Illuminated The Night"


	20. And The Night illuminated The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sexy times ahead.
> 
> The chapter's title is a (partial) quote from St. John of the Cross.

Sherlock felt a certain irreverent pleasure in crushing the wild flowers underfoot as he hurried towards the cottage. The swishing of the leaves and grass heightened his nervous anticipation. Fragments of images and words swirled inside his mind: the comical look of surprise on Betts’ face when he’d informed her she should stop tidying up his rooms, the humid brown of Gregory Lestrade’s kind eyes, Victor’s stubborn fugue from reality.

And he remembered a sentence he’d heard long ago, before the war, when his mother was still alive and literary men from all over the world used to visit their Kensington house. It said: ‘to darken this darkness, that is the gate of all wonder.’ He had been an impressionable, wide-youth back then and he’d loved the sound of these words, but he had not fully understood their meaning.

He had been in the dark for most of his life, and only now was he voluntarily undertaking a journey into the unknown of his deepest desires. And he felt so alive, like he’d never even dreamed he could be; alive with every drop of his blood singing in his veins and every gust of breeze ruffling his hair.

 

When he arrived at the gate, the gesture of clicking it shut behind him seemed highly symbolic, ritualistic.

The cottage was unusually illuminated; from afar, it resembled a plain woman bedecked with cheap yet showy jewels.

John came to the door in his shirtsleeves; his face was brick-red and his hair was wet; a few droplets shimmered, catching the light.

“Sherlock,” he murmured, and moved aside to let his lover in. “You shouldn’t be here.”

His troubled gaze caressed down the younger man’s body, insistent and shameless.

“You look,” he started, but never got to complete the sentence, as Sherlock unbuttoned his own shirt all the way down, to where it was tucked inside the waistband of his trousers. When he was done, he stood like am impudent statue, looking John straight in the eye.

“Lock the door and make love to me. I want you to leave a testimony on my skin,” he said, and his words dropped like stones in a still pond.

The only indication that John had understood his meaning was the blackness in his pupils and the infinitesimal fluttering of the pulse in his neck.

“Right,” he said, and bolted the door. He jerked his head swiftly to indicate the two large candles burning on the table. Sherlock took them obediently, and John watched the full curve of his buttocks as he went up the stairs.

In his room, John was almost uncertain, for a moment.

“Should I snuff out the candles?” he asked, as he set them on the window gable.

“I want to see everything,” Sherlock replied, and the fire of John’s gaze seared him, burning his soul to tinder; burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places.

“No more talking,” the older man said, and his calm voice affected his lover more than any barked out command. He craved to be a passive, consenting thing, like a slave, a physical slave.

John undressed then went to work on Sherlock’s clothes, removing all of his finery except for the unbuttoned shirt.

“Sit on the bed,” he ordered, and placed the open palm of his hand on his lover’s chest, forcing him to comply.

For the first time, Sherlock really _saw_ the grain of John’s skin, the wiry chest hairs, the silvery scar on his shoulder, the smattering of freckles on his torso. He had previously admired his exquisite proportions, the strength exuding from his body, but this was John stripped of the lyricism of romantic love, free from the trappings of class and rank. And Sherlock belonged to this flesh-and-blood man, and he wanted to show him the lengths he was willing to go to.

When he was flat on his back on the bed, John crawled over him and turned, so that his arousal, thick and heavy slapped against Sherlock’s mouth.

He’d never done it that way, not even in Paris, although he had heard of it. There was no time to reflect on its mechanics though, as his lover started sucking on his penis with ravenous determination. He was holding the base of Sherlock’s penis tight in his fist as he pumped him and sucked him with the meanness of a squaddie. Sherlock was sobbing with lust, but his whimpers were pressed back down into his throat as his lover fed him his cock, breaching his mouth with insistence. The younger man had been silently cautioned against using his hands, so he did his utmost to tighten his lips around the fat shaft and to contain his impulse to heave. He was dribbling copiously and the sporadic lack of air was bringing tears to his eyes and bursting stars behind them.  

The wet, slurping, grunting sounds were as intoxicating as the give and take of their reckless coupling, and when he climaxed in John’s mouth, the man’s growl instigated his own scream, and his lover’s pulsing orgasm hit Sherlock in the face and lips, some of it ending in his welcoming mouth, and some trickling down his chin.

After the first violent aftershocks had subsided, John was close to him, kissing his sore mouth, licking away the evidence of his passion from the flushed, sweaty skin, whispering tender, loving words that Sherlock couldn’t reciprocate, for he could only mewl like a weak kitten.

When his eyes regained their focus, he caught John as he stared at a sodden lock of hair, utterly fascinated by the contrast of creamy semen and raven curls. His pupils were as black as night, and Sherlock was a little frightened by this, but at the same time he was thrilled; a different, sharper, more terrible thrill than that of tenderness, but, somehow, even more desirable.

“I’ll fetch some water,” John murmured, and after kissing his lover chastely on the cheek, he was gone.

Sherlock realised that he was covered in sweat, his half-ruined shirt was drenched in it, despite the fresh night air wafting in from the open window. For a moment, he was seized by his old self-abasing tendencies, but he clipped them in the bud when John returned with a pitcher and a mug. The older man poured the water in the mug and cradled his lover’s head in the crook of his arm, bringing the mug to his swollen lips and watching him as he swallowed the liquid down his sore throat.

“You are alright, you are alright,” he crooned, in a soothing tone.

“More, more,” Sherlock pleaded, and he wasn’t referring to the drink.

John wasn’t slow to comprehend the true significance of his lover’s request. He lay down by Sherlock’s side and started running his fingers through Sherlock’s curls, softly at first, then tugging lightly and finally yanking his head back, baring the enticing, unmarked neck.

“Oh, bite me, please, bite me,” Sherlock heard himself say and was rewarded with bruising suckles at the base of his throat. When he felt the first sharp nip of teeth, he bowed his back, seeking relief from the veritable fire that surged inside him. His lover kept at it, showing no mercy, applying his nails to scratching the inside of Sherlock’s thighs, the tender skin beneath his navel, his peaked nipples. He bit what he had scratched and soothed it with a greedy, wanton tongue.

When he felt that Sherlock was getting lost in that sweet torture, John reached for the jar of oil that he’d placed on the chest of drawers by the bed; he slicked his hands with it, abundantly. He went to work on his lover’s heavy sac, massaging and softly kneading it, until it was tight and shiny; then he pressed behind it, stroking insistent circles on the perineum, edging closer to the ring of quivering flesh that demanded his attention. Sherlock felt the embers of passion simmer and grow into a flame, again and again, filling his phallus at a languorous, aching pace.

“John, John,” he babbled, and finally he was breached by a finger that became two, and there was a lancing ache inside him, like the probing of a needle on an infected wound. It demanded more pain, more pleasure, more, more.

“More, more,” he chanted, loudly. And John pulled him up on his lap, and a corner of Sherlock’s dazed brain understood, and he let himself sink down on the rigid, sleek member.

He cried out and shook, and the pain split him in two, but he needed it like air; he knew he should move, but his muscles refused to oblige. They twitched and contracted of their own accord, as aimless and lost as he was; John was wet all over, sweat dripping into his unseeing eyes, but he gathered his strength and, grasping at Sherlock’s neck and hip, he guided the fevered body up and down, until the motion became second nature to the younger man, and he repeatedly immolated himself on his lover’s cock. The point of that imaginary needle tormented him, until it stabbed him one final time and he exploded, his release shooting out of him like jets from a fountain; shuddering, continuous pulses of it, that had him spasm and writhe. He felt stripped to his very core; the passion licked round him, consuming, and when the sensual flame pressed through his bowels, he really thought he was dying: yet a poignant, marvellous death He shouted like a possessed, hungry thing and John spent deep inside him, holding him down, inscribing his devotion right into Sherlock’s soul.

 

“I never dared hope someone like you existed,” John whispered, as he held his satiated lover in his arms. An old sheet had been used to wipe them both down and the cool night air caressed them, a pleasant balm on their overheated bodies.

“Like me?”

“Aye, my love; someone unafraid to give in to their most secret desires,” he explained, kissing the puffy lips with tender devotion.

“I had not known before tonight; well, this afternoon, to be precise. I wanted you to take charge, I suppose,” Sherlock replied, tentatively.

“Perhaps I should have donned my old uniform, full regalia and all,” John quipped, smiling lazily in between sweet kisses. His lover’s response was a famished embrace, full of tongue and pleading, pretty moans.

“Yes, yes, my love,” John choked out, burying his face in his lover’s neck and breathing his musky scent.

“You like my body,” Sherlock marvelled.

“That I do. I finally understand the Greeks and their refinements of passion, their extravagances of sensuality. I could spend days hunting out the ore of your essence, burrowing into the very heart of the jungle of you.”

Sherlock felt a triumph at this, almost a vainglory. That was how he really was. There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. He shared his ultimate nakedness with a man he loved, that he absolutely adored. At the bottom of his soul, fundamentally, he had needed this, he had secretly wanted it, and he had believed that he would never get it. Now suddenly there it was, and John was sharing his last and final nakedness.

“Your beautiful shirt is ruined,” John said, with a tinge of satisfaction, fingering the crumpled, sodden silk.

“Never mind,” Sherlock replied, nestling close to him.

“Leave it here, I can put it between my legs at night, for company. It smells of you.”

The younger man nodded eagerly, and tangled together, happy and exhausted, they both went to sleep.

 

John’s rousing waked Sherlock. He saw his own nakedness in John’s eyes, immediate knowledge of him. And the fluid, intense knowledge of himself seemed to flow to him from John’s eyes and wrap him. How voluptuous and lovely it was to have limbs and body half-asleep, heavy and suffused with passion.

“What time is it?” he croaked

“Half past six.”

He had to go soon. Always, always, always this compulsion on one! He wanted it to be over, soon and forever.

“What did the police say?” he asked, at last letting the world inside the tiny room.

“I’m sure you know the gist of it already. They will arrest me if they don’t find any other wretch to pin the guilt to. I went to see Mary.”

Sherlock entire body went rigid in alarm, as if to fend off an impending blow. John understood and smothered him in gentle caresses, to calm him down.

“She was in tears, poor soul; doesn’t know what to think or say. She told them the truth, but you know what they are like, these bloody-minded fellows, they will twist every word till it means something else entirely.”

“You won’t divorce her now, will you? You are too good a man to abandon her to her present woe.”

“Maybe I will have no say in it, as I may soon have a noose around my neck,” John replied, bitterly.

Sherlock cannoned off the bed, his eyes bright with fury.

“I will never let that happen, do you hear me? Never!” he shouted.

“I’m sorry, love,” John said, and went up to him, taking him in his arms.

 “I might make the breakfast and bring it up here; should I? And you’ll tell me your news,” he said, after a while.

Sherlock threw off his shirt and rubbed himself with a sheet.

He opened the curtain. The sun was shining already on the tender green leaves of morning, and the wood stood bluey-fresh, in the nearness. The air of morning drifted in, and the sound of birds. Birds flew continuously past. Then he saw Flossie roaming out. He sat up in bed, his naked arms feeling useless without John to hold on to.

 

Downstairs he heard John pumping water, going out at the back door. By and by came the smell of bacon, and at length he came upstairs with a huge black tray that would only just go through the door. He set the tray on the bed, and poured out the tea. Sherlock squatted in his nakedness, and fell on his food hungrily. John sat on the one chair, with his plate on his knees.

“I wish I could stay here with you, and this horrid mess were a million miles away!”

“Aye!”

“You promise we will live together and have a life together, you and me! You promise me, don't you?”

“I devoutly hope so.”

“Yes! And we _will!_ we _will!”_ he leaned over, making the tea spill, catching John’s wrist.

“My love,” John said, tidying up the tea.

“We can't possibly _not_ be together now, can we?” Sherlock said appealingly.

John looked up at him with an adoring expression and kissed him on the lips.

He asked him again for the news, and Sherlock recounted his story, down to the minutest detail.

“Likely as not, it won’t be conclusive,” John said, referring to the fingerprints evidence.

“I know, but it’s something.”

The older man shook his head, dissatisfied.

“I’m afraid this is just the start of a very long, troublesome affair. That man is the devil incarnate; he will fight us like a wild, cornered beast.”

“We will fight back, John, and we’ll triumph,” Sherlock replied.

Naked as he was, his torso riddled with scratches and bruises, his hair a tangled halo, he was the most magnificent, regal creature John had ever set eyes upon.

“You should wear a crown on that glorious head,” he suggested, in a ragged voice.

“Perhaps you should enlist again, kill a foreign king for me and bring me his crown.”

“Perhaps I will.”

He set the tray on the floor and pulled Sherlock closer, until the younger man was sat on his lap.

“You deserve to have wars fought for you and cities pillaged,” he murmured, as he licked up Sherlock’s quivering neck.

“Villages burnt to the ground,” the younger man choked out, caressing down his lover’s brawny back. They kissed and caressed each other for a long while, until it was time for Sherlock to go.

“Get ready, my love. I'm just going to look round outside.”

Sherlock saw him go reconnoitring into the lane, with dog and gun. He went downstairs and washed, and was ready by the time his lover came back. He locked up, and they set off, but through the wood, not down the lane. He was being wary.

At last John stopped.

“I'll just strike across here,” he said, pointing to the right. He kissed Sherlock and held him close for a moment. Then he sighed, and kissed him again.

When they separated, he turned and left. He strode over the low brambles and bracken, leaving a trail through the fern.

Sherlock watched him go with a sinking, yet determined heart.

“We shall triumph, I promise you we shall,” he murmured to himself.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and commenting.
> 
> Next: reality bites (not the title of the chapter, but the gist of it)


	21. Turks or Infidels?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock makes a discovery.
> 
> The chapter's title is from Richard III ("What? Think you we are Turks or infidels?")
> 
> The robbery Dimmock talks about was a real case.  
> Lestrade's comments about the laudanum are taken from a minute of evidence given to the Central Criminal Court by a surgeon whose name was, wait for this, Luke Holmes.
> 
> Interestingly (at least for me), in The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad one of the characters is named Michaelis, which is the name of the Moriarty character in Lady Chatterley's Lover. 
> 
> Coincidences ahoy.

Sergeant Frank Dimmock was a young, awkward man with a delicate, shy face and shrewd green eyes. He was short and slight, and he was wearing a serviceable, cheap suit in a shiny fabric that was badly cut and too long in the sleeve.

Sherlock immediately took to him, while Victor’s stance was one of patronising antagonism.

Naturally, Sir Victor had to be informed as to the real purpose of Lestrade’s visit and Mrs Donovan spent a rather unpleasant and trying morning being scolded for her alleged part in the deception. Once she’d calmed him down, she resolved to get him out of the manor. She skilfully insinuated the idea that it would demeaning for a baronet to be entrammelled in such mundane affairs and that he should apply his energy and intellect to the pursuit of higher goals. The miners were scared a murderer was on the loose and they looked up to their master for guidance.

“Let the police do their job, Sir Victor. Little do they know the responsibilities you carry on your shoulders. That’s far more important, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

And Victor didn’t mind, not at all. At the start, Sherlock had despised his husband for letting this woman rule him, but now he was indifferent: let him make a fool of himself, if that made him feel like a man.

After lunch, Sir Victor ordered the car and with Mrs Donovan, they motored to Tevershall, where he intended to visit the colliery and consult with his physician.

Sherlock had arranged to meet the nurse in a cosy tea-room with Mrs Weedon in attendance, once Victor had been safely delivered into the hands of his doctor. He usually spent at least one hour in the company of the venerable white-haired man, discussing anything but his condition, about which he was too afraid to ask questions.

 

Dimmock had brought with him all the paraphernalia for fingerprinting and Sherlock had watched attentively, as surfaces were dusted and closely examined. The results were not what he had hoped for: the bottle carried the imprint of two different sets of prints, one belonging to him and the other, most probably, to Moriarty; however, the chair was a battleground of smudged impressions and superimposed prints.

“Happens all the time,” Dimmock explained, shaking his head and touching a powdered finger to his lower lip. “Too many people handling something and bob’s your uncle! For the criminal, I mean.”

He blushed slightly and turned his back to Sherlock, who grinned despite his annoyance at the momentary setback.

“At least, we have the ones on the bottle and I guess you will have to take mine now, correct?”

“Yes, if your Lordship doesn’t mind.”

“Not in the least,” Sherlock said, and he rolled up his sleeves, like he’d done when he’d helped John with the coops.

Such innocent times, he mused, and sighed. Dimmock’s gaze ventured upwards for the first time and Sherlock noticed the flicker of interest in the serious green eyes.

A London boy who’d never talked to a titled gentleman before, clearly; and he was curious, like a child at the zoo.

“I have read you’ve had great successes with this technique.”

“Oh yes, your Lordship! We were living next door to the Farrows when they were killed. It was back then I made up my mind to join the force. Big story, that was.”

Sherlock remembered the case, vaguely. He’d only been a young boy at the time and his parents disapproved of sensationalism and violence. At school though, it had been another matter: there, he could always find a way to scour the papers for the most lurid accounts. The era of the penny dreadfuls was long gone, but the hankering for crime stories had endured.

“Remind me, if you please,” he said, and Dimmock complied.

It was the sordid story of two shopkeepers in South London who had been bludgeoned to death and their cash box emptied. The robbery had been perpetrated by the Stratton brothers and it was the fingerprint of one of them - Alfred’s - that was on the box.

“Yes, yes, I remember now! And the neighbours found them while the wife was still breathing!”

Dimmock’s eyes lit up and he suddenly looked both younger and taller.

“That was my dad that did it! He was never one to refuse being on the front lines, no sir!”

Sherlock detected a tearful nostalgia in his tone, and guessed Dimmock’s father must have been injured, or worse, in the war. Killed, he decided, observing the young man’s compulsive swallowing and the blinking of his eyes.

Death and destruction everywhere, he thought: such waste! He had always loved poetry: Keats, Tennyson and Blake were his favourites. Yet he could never bring himself to tackle Sassoon and Owen as he should have, because their suffering was too close to home. He was as cowardly as Victor, after all. He wanted his art to be beautiful and distant, just like the Lady of Shalott in her frigid seclusion.

“There is still some measure of beauty in this world, isn’t there?” he asked the young policeman.

Dimmock cast him a puzzled glance and tilted his head to the side, considering.

“My dad used to say: you can’t make the pudding without breaking the eggs. England is the pudding and them who died are the eggs,” he said, and looked outside the open window. “You have a grand place, here, your Lordship.”

Sherlock sighed and rubbed his ink-stained fingers.

“Yes, but I severely doubt it’s worth all the eggs that were broken to preserve it, my dear fellow.”

 

Sherlock was pacing his room, glad that Mycroft had taken himself elsewhere.

He was feeling increasingly like a caged animal and the presence of the young, enthusiastic policeman had brought into stark relief the lifeless languor of his own existence, the lack of scope, of purpose. Until he’d met John, he’d gone about like a creature in a daydream, a butterfly inside a bell-jar.

He had detected the same deadly, inert character in Victor’s writings, but had believed Moriarty’s to be different, more scathing and rebellious. What he was, instead, was a cruel dissembler, who took pleasure in tormenting and destroying.

Snakes of his kind were used to being trampled underfoot, they rejoiced in it, because it gave them the chance to strike unperceived; their victims would die in surprise, not knowing what had bit them.

He stopped suddenly in front of the mirror: his dressing gown had parted and he saw the marks on his ivory skin. In the pure light of day, they seemed even more numerous and dramatic. He touched them one by one, softly, almost like a caress. Blissful memories. He closed his eyes and bit his lips. There was honesty in that pain, he thought, like in a declaration of intent: I give myself to you, for ever.

 

He was shaken out of this intense mood by the chug of a motorcar coming up the drive. When he looked out of the window, he saw his brother and Lestrade dismount and stop just outside the front door steps. He was too high up to see their faces, but he knew with the certainty of a child knowing his mother just died, that something terrible had happened.

“John,” he whispered, and his hand went to his throat, in an ancestral, protective gesture.

 

“I’m afraid the news is not good, your Lordship… Sherlock. There is no evidence of any other suspect who could have done away with the victim. They will arrest John Watson later today. I have asked them to postpone the deed until I could inform the Manor personally, which is what I am doing.”

Sherlock was shivering, despite the warm sunlight invading the sitting room.

“There was no trace of laudanum in his body,” he said, icily.

Lestrade looked at Mycroft, who sat upright with an inscrutable expression on his pale face, and shook his head.

“There was nothing deleterious found in the stomach, no odour of opiate emanating from it and no vestige in his house or on his person of anything that had contained laudanum. It is perfectly possible that a quantity of the substance sufficient to cause death in seven or eight hours, might be absorbed as to leave no traces of it.”

Sherlock stood up and strode to the door.

“It won’t do him any good, little brother. He will not want you there now.”

“This is preposterous! What then, should I sip tea and chat with you about the weather as he’s jailed for a crime he did not commit? What would you have me do brother, pretend I’m the Lord of the manor, untouched by the fate of my subjects?” he hissed in Mycroft’s face.

The elder Holmes seemed unruffled, even though he was as angry as Sherlock.  Two hours in the company of a simpleton coroner and a witless country Inspector had torn his nerves to shreds.

“What you can do for him is find him a good lawyer, one who will plead his case with honesty and integrity. The last thing he needs is a surfeit of theatrics, either from you or his counsel.”

“And I should stay here, waiting? I won’t do that, never!” he screamed. He was aware of sounding like a fractious infant, and vaguely ashamed at Lestrade’s being party to this, but when he ventured to gaze at the man, he discerned only compassion and concern in his countenance.

“No one is asking you to cover your head in ashes and play the victim, dear brother. I was thinking you could come to London, for a while.”

“London, why on earth would I want to be there at this juncture?”

“James Moriarty lives there; leading a rather interesting life, for want of a better definition. And your brother thinks you wouldn’t mind taking a closer look,” Lestrade intervened.

Sherlock stared at him and understood the full implication of his words: evidently, the police knew something of the underhand nature of some of the man’s enterprises, but had no proof and no way of breaching the wall of pretence Moriarty had erected around his true self.

“I don’t want to stay in Kensington with father and heaven knows I won’t share your lodgings,” he affirmed. Mycroft winced at the suggestion and Lestrade laughed heartily.

“There is a place in Marylebone, close to Regent's Park. An old friend of mother’s is desperate to find a tenant,” Mycroft said, feigning indifference.

“Is she really?” Sherlock smirked. “I wonder how much you paid the previous lodgers to pack their trunks and leave. Or perhaps you unleashed your secret agents on them, threatening fire and brimstone if they didn’t vacate the premises.”

Lestrade laughed even louder and Mycroft scoffed.

“I only occupy a minor position in the civil service, little brother. I am not the protagonist of a Joseph Conrad novelette.”

“I will think about it,” Sherlock said, but in his mind he was already packing his bags and driving away from Fansworth. He had to help John and there was no time to waste.

 

The tea-shop resembled an old woman grotesquely made-up to resemble a blushing maiden. The once-white walls were streaked with soot and the well-scrubbed floor had dirt ingrained in it from decades of spilt drinks and soiled boots.

Sherlock was used to the refinements ascribed to his station, but unlike his brother, he had not become fastidious. Although he had a predilection for beauty and harmony, he was attracted to muck: sticking his arm in it down to his elbow seemed to him a good way of fleeing from the bitch-goddess and its stifling tentacles.

He was wearing his least showy attire, but there was no disguising his flamboyant curls or his swan-like neck. Luckily the place was nearly empty; the only two customers were decrepit and immersed in what seemed a gripping conversation.

Mrs Donovan and her friend had already arrived and were sitting at a corner table well hidden from the door and the street-facing window.

Mrs Weedon had the unmistakable look of someone starved for excitement: the gaze of her pale, bulging eyes was hungry and intent and upon spotting Sherlock, she licked her thin lips in anticipation.

They exchanged greetings and sipped the strong tea Mrs Donovan had ordered, but Sherlock was impatient and asked the question he’d been burning to ask.

“Is your husband certain the man he saw with Anderson was a Turk?”

The directness of the enquiry stunned the woman into silence.

“Bertha dear, tell his Lordship what you told me,” the nurse said, pushing a plate of buttered scones towards her whippet-thin friend.

“Well,” she started and stopped again, unable to look Sherlock in the eye.

“Dear Mrs Weedon, your testimony is of priceless importance, but rest assured we will find a way to recompense your goodwill,” he said, taking the woman’s hand in his. Bertha Weedon had seen Sherlock once before and thought he was a cold, unfeeling, supercilious gentleman. But now, with his oddly-coloured eyes – because, honestly, what shade were they? – shining and his lips smiling at her, she felt inclined to do anything he asked for.

“George was taking a cut of pork shoulder to the Millers, the cottage at the end of the village, that snooty woman who hasn’t a good word for anyone, and he saw them, clear as day, they was behind the oak tree, hiding sort of; a swarthy-faced fellow, with an embroidered coat and a white shirt, oriental-like. They was talking in low voices, thick as thieves. Not that I want to say anything bad about that poor man, bless his soul, but it is not normal, is it? Chatting to a stranger like this, away from the village, and an oriental foreigner too! George only caught sight of them as the day was sunny and he fancied a smoke, so he stopped by the tree. Quite a fright, they gave him.”

I bet, Sherlock thought. Probably George Weedon had been snooping and had only been driven away by the fear of being caught eavesdropping.

“But why a Turk? He could have been an Italian or a Greek,” he said, and something akin to a clap of thunder struck him and left him uncharacteristically agape.

Mrs Weedon blushed, afraid she had done or said something improper.

“Could he have been a Greek?” he asked, when he recovered his power of speech.

“Well, I suppose, he could have. You see, George and I, we had been to a pantomime last Christmas – such a lovely show that was – and one of the fellows had such a coat and blackened face and he was playing a Turk and my George said that foreign fellow looked just like him! And the police accusing him of imagining things, as if he was the fancy sort, my George!”

Sherlock nodded and Mrs Donovan stared at him in some amazement, but wanting to not appear intrusive she didn’t say a word.

“What about the argument between Anderson and Watson, was it really so violent?”

Mrs Weedon seemed to rally and was evidently glad she had witnessed that encounter in person.

“He was fair shouting, Watson was! And Anderson was whimpering like a lamb, his tail between his legs, so to speak. He has a temper, Watson has; I don’t mean any disrespect, he’s a good fellow and all, but I was frightened myself, the way he bellowed. They were arguing about money, but I couldn’t hear what they said other than Watson was refusing to give him more. I don’t blame him, for sure. That poor man loved his gin, he did!”

Sherlock thanked the woman profusely and left her in the hands of Mrs Donovan, who hastened to order more tea and scones.

 _I live with a servant. He’s a Greek and rather shrewd_ , Moriarty had said, and Sherlock, like a halfwit had let that information macerate in his mind. But now, surely, they had something that could, should, implicate James Moriarty.

He had planned to visit Mary Watson but that would have to wait; it was important that Lestrade knew of his discovery as soon as humanly possible.

Perhaps John would not be arrested after all, and Sherlock wouldn’t have to go to London and live in a stranger’s house in Marylebone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for staying with me and commenting!
> 
> Next: Sherlock goes to London


	22. The Tangled Web We Weave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock leaves Fansworth Hall
> 
> The chapter's title is (famously) from Marmion by Walter Scott (Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!)
> 
> The Crossley Chester is a real car of the era.

“The rector said it would be as well if Watson left the place. He knows of a young fellow, Joe Chambers, who’s already been initiated to as many mysteries of the craft as possible. After all, Watson won’t be able to do any game-keeping from prison.”

Victor had returned from the village in buoyant mood and the glad tidings regarding his health had renewed fighting spirit.

Through the eyes of strangers, it would appear impossible that such an intelligent, accomplished man could fail to realise his husband’s estrangement. After all, Sherlock had hardly been subtle, what with his brother and Inspector Lestrade coming to John Watson’s aid like the cavalry. But when Victor looked at Sherlock, all he saw was a riddle he had tired of decrypting. Besides, his manly vigour was returning and his concerns were tied up to his land, the pit and the prospect of finally producing an heir to Fansworth. He had not quite decided how to instigate the latter, but he was firm in his resolve. And since Sherlock had openly voiced his disapproval, Victor had simply concluded his husband would have no say in the question.

He didn’t really _see_ Sherlock anymore, didn’t register his presence unless it was as an audience to his tales of woe or triumph.

Thus, he continued with his narrative, unaware of Sherlock’s glare and of the deep blush on his cheeks.

“The rector said it came to his knowledge that Watson’s response to the chatter regarding his private life was, and I quote, ‘folks should do their own fucking, instead of listening to a lot of stuff about another man's. It’s not for them to shame me for having a cod between my legs.' No doubt this contained the real germ of truth, but the mode of putting it, however, was neither delicate nor respectful.”

“Respectful!” Sherlock exploded. “He’s being imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Surely he has every reason to be forthright. Being delicate is hardly his main preoccupation at the moment.”

Victor stared at his husband with open enmity, annoyed at his lack of solidarity. Mrs Donovan had left them alone, sensing an impending confrontation.

“You do seem awfully partial to this Watson fellow. You and your Bolshevist ideas! I blame your mother. That Fabian society she was involved with is a notorious hotbed of seething dissent. The nationalisation of land rents, for instance, what do you call that?”

Sherlock’s complexion had turned a purplish shade of red and his mouth was contorting in fury.

“I forbid you to mention my mother! And as for the social reforms the Fabian is advocating, I call them justice. You used to sing from a very different hymn sheet when I met you,” he barked out.

As his husband reddened, Victor’s skin had acquired a sallow tinge.

“That was before I realised the full import of my responsibilities. There is a time for dreaming and one for real life,” he replied, curtly.

“And I guess John Watson’s _real life_ is not included in your lofty plans.”

“The man is suspected of murder and the victim was one of my colliers.”

“ _Your_ land, _your_ colliers: there speaks the voice of entitlement!”

If Victor could have sprung out of his chair, he would have done so. His face went even more yellow, and his eyes bulged with disaster as he glared at Sherlock.

“You are my husband; we should be of one mind,” he murmured, and closed his eyes, as if too disgusted to look at the younger man.

“I think I will accept Mycroft’s invitation and go to London for a while.”

“If may be for the better,” Victor replied, and immediately rang for the nurse, who had expected to be summoned and arrived immediately.

She was a little impatient of Sir Victor. Any man in his senses must have _known_ his husband was in love with somebody else, and was going to leave him. She imagined that perhaps he was inwardly aware of it, only he wouldn't admit it to himself. If he would have admitted it, and prepared himself for it: or if he would have admitted it, and actively struggled with Sherlock against it: that would have been acting like a man. But no! He knew it, and all the time tried to kid himself it wasn't so. He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on him. “It’s because”, she thought to herself, despising him a little, “because he always thinks of himself. He's so wrapped up in his own immortal self, that when he does get contradicted he's like a mummy tangled in its own bandages. Look at him!”

And yet she wanted to be with him and take Sherlock’s place in his life. For this reason and because she liked lovers, she would do anything in her power to champion his Lordship’s cause.

 

When Sherlock had returned to Fansworth from his Tevershall expedition, his mood had been as positive and gleeful as Victor’s after consulting his physician.

Unfortunately, Lestrade had not been as sanguine.

The Scotland Yarder had returned from the police station and had been talking to Mycroft in the blue sitting room. The elder Holmes excused himself as soon as his brother made his entrance, a detail that told Sherlock more than the subsequent words spoken by Lestrade.

“Brent is a stubborn chap; initially he didn’t believe George Weedon, but he listened to the village rumours and accepted the existence of the Turkish fellow as part of the blackmailing plot. If Weedon tells him now the chap may have been a Greek after all, Brent will go back to his former diffidence and decide that Anderson was killed by Watson in a moment of madness. Unless, that is, we are able to find this Greek fellow and contrive a way to bring him here for Weedon to identify.”

Sherlock brushed a trembling hand through his hair and felt inclined to pull it out.

“But why do you complicate things so? It seems to me you’re not really interested in finding the real culprit. What does Anderson’s family think of this, I wonder? Surely they want justice to be made,” he shouted.

“His only family is Mary Watson and their child,” the Inspector replied, quietly. “As for your accusation of complicating things, you are not entirely wrong. But spare a thought for the poor man, having a Scotland Yard Inspector on his patch, telling him what do. He probably feels that he has to stand his ground and fight me a little. To save face, you understand?”

Sherlock didn’t understand; to him, it was all a foolish and deadly game of chess.

His expression must have been eloquent, because Lestrade sighed and shook his head.

“He won’t accept my informal advice for fear of appearing weak to his men,” he explained.

“But can’t Scotland Yard force his hand? If Moriarty’s servant committed this imaginary blackmail, you should have the power to intervene. We could take Weedon to London! No, of course not… that won’t do… I’m being a prize dunce,” he mumbled, and Lestrade looked at him with increasing puzzlement.

Sherlock had finally given in to the impulse of tugging at his curls and was pacing the room like a possessed imp.

“What is it?” the inspector asked and, truth be told, he felt a definite twinge of recognition: the two brothers were not unlike, when all was said and done.

“John has to stay here and I have to go to London,” he declared, and Lestrade gaped. He was glad Dimmock had gone back to London or he would have been there, witnessing his superior officer’s discomfiture.

Sherlock smiled in a manic way, and proceeded to explain his deductions with the verbal dexterity of a skilled barrister. Lestrade couldn’t take his eyes off him, as he gesticulated wildly to emphasise his reasoning.

“Moriarty was here in the spring; he was writing a play about Victor, but I bet that was just a decoy. Before he left, he insinuated I was ‘free to roam the countryside’, that’s the way he put it. He must have known, or at least suspected, of my relationship with John. He was on his way to Sheffield; he said he had business there. He wasn’t forthcoming, but he mentioned he was acquiring material for a new play. He was already weaving his web and we’ve all been caught in it. If we know about his servant, it’s because he wanted us to; he wouldn’t have mentioned him to me otherwise. I did find it unusual at the time, but I judged him an outcast and a rebel: what a naïve fool I have been! If you were to visit Moriarty and enquire about the Greek man, I’m certain he would lament the sudden disappearance of his faithful servant and you’d be forced to consider the eventuality of John Watson having murdered him too. Oh, he’s a clever rogue, but I won’t let him win. What did you mean when you said he leads an interesting life?”

Lestrade blinked, as he snapped out of his semi-contemplative state.

“Blimey, I believe you are onto something. There have been suspicious disappearances and suicides linked to Moriarty, one way or another. We have tried to investigate, but the upper classes do not like to be seen consorting with the police. Every time we tried to dig deeper, we’d come a cropper: silences, denials, lack of cooperation.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened.

“Precisely!” he exclaimed, so ferociously that the Inspector drew back a little. “I will come to London and play Moriarty’s game until I find the way to prove he’s implicated in Anderson’s demise.”

“I don’t know whether your brother will approve,” the Inspector said, a little worried.

“Mycroft had already guessed this would come to pass, or he wouldn’t have secured lodgings for me in London,” the younger man replied.

“221B Baker Street," said Mycroft, who'd sidled into the room. “That’s your new address, little brother.”

 

 

Sherlock had resented leaving John’s cottage after their encounters, and he absolutely detested having to say his goodbyes in a stark, squalid room, with a policeman standing guard at the door and a table separating him from the man he loved.

Thankfully, the uniformed boy was out of earshot, provided they spoke in murmurs.

John’s face was haggard and his eyes red-rimmed, but his back was straight and his head held high. A fighter, Sherlock thought, proudly. He wanted to touch him, squeeze his hand and hated that he could not.

“Are they treating you decently?” he asked.

“I’ve had far worse,” John replied, smiling softly.

His gaze caressed Sherlock’s face, and spoke of his trust and love for the younger man.

“Mycroft has engaged the services of an excellent lawyer who will secure your discharge on bail. Have you a place to go? Victor won’t allow you to stay at the cottage,” he said, angrily.

“I wouldn’t go back anyway. I’m done with that part of my life. I will stay with my mother; she doesn’t approve of me, but she will keep me until my fate is decided, one way or the other.”

Sherlock winced, but continued talking.

“I have arranged for an allowance to be paid to Mary. It’s my money, not Victor’s. Perhaps Mrs Donovan could speak to her about nurse training; what do you think?”

John’s eyes were overflowing with emotion and his jaw was set.

When he spoke, his voice was ragged.

“I don’t deserve you is what I think. You should have the best of everything, and instead…”

“I already have the absolute best, John,” Sherlock replied, in a sultry, dark tone.

He was wearing a long silk scarf and underneath it, his tight shirt was unbuttoned from top to sternum. He shifted a little until he had his back to the guard, and he parted the fabric, uncovering his bare skin. One nipple was half visible, peaked and still bruised from their previous encounter. He touched the tip of his thumb to it and closed his eyes. John emitted a low, pained growl and the familiar tide of heat surged and engulfed them both.

“I want you,” John whispered, and Sherlock’s eyes fluttered open and met his lover’s intense, stormy gaze. His chest felt too tight, he couldn’t breathe. He wanted to remove every single article of clothing and let John ravish him. Yes, ravish, like Victor had once said, referring to nature. He understood the merits of ravishing, now that he was John’s lover.

“Yes,” he replied, biting down on his lower lip.

They drowned in the searing pool of their desire for a long while, until John shook his head, suddenly aware that time was ticking away.

“They will lead me back inside soon,” he murmured.

 Sherlock sighed and adjusted his appearance, with swift, angry motions.

“I’m going to London to find him,” he said, curtly, with a defiance born of frustration.

“I see,” John replied.

“The Turkish fellow they brag about is Moriarty’s Greek servant.”

“And he will no longer be in his employ. Yes, I do see,” he repeated, and nodded in a disconsolate way. “There is no other way ahead and if I could, I’d follow you there. But you know this much already. I’d follow you to hell, if I had to.”

A broad smile lit up Sherlock’s face.

“The two of us against the rest of the world,” he declared.

“Always,” John replied, his mouth curving into a wicked grin.

Oh, they were going to be splendid and unbeatable together, Sherlock thought. Nothing could touch them, certainly not that Irish vermin.

“221B Baker Street, London. Will you write to me?”

John mouthed the address and committed it to memory.

“If you promise to write back,” he said, archly, before adding “Take the violin with you; playing it will give your pleasure, assuage your fears.”

“You know, John, I think I will,” Sherlock replied.

The guard cleared his throat and there was no time left for anything except a brief, warm handshake and a hurried farewell.

 

Despite their disagreements, Victor was uneasy at Sherlock’s departure. He was attached to the idea of his marriage, and in a distant, confused way, he still believed in their integrated life, the habit of residing under the same roof and eating their meals together. He was afraid Sherlock would not come back.

“You won't let me down, now, will you?” he said.

“How?”

“While you're away, I mean, you're sure to come back?”

“I'm as sure as I can be of anything, that I shall come back.”

Victor looked at his husband, strangely. Yet he really wanted him to go. That was so curious. He wanted him to go, positively. At the same time, he was afraid of him going.

Sherlock was uneasy too, knowing soon it would be time for leaving Victor altogether, waiting till the time when it would not damage John even further.

 

“I must say good-bye to you, Mrs Donovan, you know why. But I can trust you not to talk,” Sherlock said to the woman, as she was helping him pack. How far away that other morning seemed, when they had been both engaged in the same innocent task!

“Oh, you can trust me. I'll be faithful to Sir Victor, and I'll be faithful to you, for I can see you're both right in your own ways.”

“And write to me if there is any news, and tell me about Sir Victor, how he is.”

Sherlock looked her in the eye and was certain she understood him fully.

“Very good, your Lordship, I will. I will prey for your success and hope you will come back to us soon, and with good news.”

“I will do my very best, dear Mrs Donovan. I was wondering if you could do me a favour: keep a watchful eye on Mary Watson for me.”

“I was thinking about her this very morning, your Lordship. Such a nurturing soul, dear Mary, she would make an excellent nurse,” the woman declared.

“Would she? How splendid,” Sherlock replied, as if the concept had never crossed his mind.

When his trunks were packed and secured inside the boot of Lestrade’s capacious motorcar, he’d said his final goodbyes and found himself on the front steps, looking up at Fansworth Hall and wondering if he’d reside inside its ancient walls again.

Mycroft’s car horn honked impatiently, one, two, three times. Sherlock joined his brother, and the two-seater, followed by the Inspector’s Crossley Chester, drove away, London-bound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading and leaving kudos/comments
> 
> Next: Sherlock goes to Baker Street


	23. The Green-Eyed Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is finally where he belongs, albeit without John.
> 
> The chapter's title is from Shakespeare's Othello.
> 
> I have shamelessly referenced Virginia Woolf's death and The Portrait of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) and there is an indication that Moriarty may be a sort of Iago, which I think would suit his somewhat passive sexuality. 
> 
>  
> 
> Anyway, here it is.

The Max Reger violin sonata had been one of his mother’s favourites. Violet Holmes had been a peculiar breed of woman.

A patroness of the arts and committed socialist, she had brought up her sons to be open-minded and free in thought and deed. Yet, she had not sufficiently prepared them for the harshness of the world outside their enlightened circle. Despite – or perhaps because of – Paris, Sherlock had acquired a skewed idea of transgression that had very little kinship with the reality of wickedness.

Before Moriarty and Anderson’s murder, he had never encountered evil, unless it was in literary or hypothetical form. Even the enemy had been a distant foe, as he his war had been fought on home soil. The German boys he had met in pre-war France had felt as disoriented as Sherlock, and as unwilling to face the mundane.

He lost himself in the music, forcing his unpractised fingers to remember the notes, and thought of Violet’s gaze, so warm and bright, but somehow always faraway, as if she couldn’t allow the present moment to conquer her completely.

Sherlock had inherited the same restlessness, a yearning for the next instant, for tomorrow.

Victor had slowly muted his husband’s nature, rendering it anodyne, while John Watson had started the restoration process, and music was an integral part of it. He had missed his violin and the peace that descended on him once he started playing.

The melody dipped and soared, and he was so immersed in it that he had not heard Mrs Hudson knock.

“Your Lordship, you have a visitor,” she bellowed, rapping the closed door with her silver-topped cane.

That Mrs Hudson could have been a friend of Violet Holmes was still a mystery to him. While the latter had been tall, intense and charismatic woman, the former was as slight and unprepossessing as a sparrow. What he could tell they had in common was a rather straightforward manner and a deep affection, tinged with concern, for Sherlock.

The younger Holmes had intimated he wanted to be called by his given name, but the woman only complied when they were alone.

“A moment, please,” he shouted back, grinning at the thought of what his husband would have said, if he’d been present; possibly, he would have uttered a scathing comment relating to East London markets and the selling of fish produce.

 

He placed the instrument back into its case and the case in the alcove to the side of the fireplace. Deprived of the luxury of servants, except for a girl who came to do the cleaning every other day, the rooms had acquired the unmistakable air of bachelor’s lodgings: articles of clothing strewn around the bedroom, newspapers and books piled up on shelves and tables and half-drunk cups of tea abandoned in the most inappropriate places.

Sherlock had discovered that he loved drinking tea while soaking in the bathtub, and now that time belonged to him only, he luxuriated in this newfound solitude.

The only problem was that he missed John: he yearned for his touch and his quiet assurance, and he consoled himself imagining the two of them living there, sharing those rooms in the midst of the hustle and bustle of London. Mycroft had informed him that the lawyer had done his duty and John had been freed and was awaiting trial from his mother’s cottage. They had gained some time, and the police were still trying to find the Turkish man’s whereabouts; aside from that, there were no news on the matter.

 

Lestrade had shown Sherlock the reports on the cases he had previously hinted at: there weren’t many, and their haphazard nature made it difficult to affix the blame of any of these occurrences to Moriarty.

One was the suicide of a lady writer named Evelyn Rose: she had walked into the Serpentine with stones inside her pockets and had left a goodbye letter that spoke of melancholia and intense despair. Moriarty had been an acquaintance of hers, and he’d based one of his plays on her rise to success and her circle of artist friends.

Another was the disappearance of Peter, the cadet of the family of the Earls of Craven. He had just married Lady Eloise Ferrars and the couple seemed reasonably happy, despite Peter’s predilection for profligacy and carousing.

There had been rumours of gambling debts and affairs with young men, but Craven had seemed unruffled by the gossip. He had last been seen, allegedly, outside a brothel in the London Bridge area, but the only witness had been a prostitute.  She had also mentioned a dark-skinned man, but couldn’t give a more accurate description. Moriarty had frequented the same parties as Peter Craven and they had appeared to be on friendly, sometimes even affectionate, terms.

The third and last case they could link to the Irishman was another suicide: a painter, Frances Shaw, had been found hanging from a beam in his studio in Bloomsbury. He was having an affair with a young man, who was also habitually posing for him. The lover, a Mr Thomas Garnett, had found him and declared, after he recovered from the profound shock, that Shaw had never displayed any sign of preoccupation or deep concern. As an artist, he’d been subject to variations in mood, but that had been part of his nature, nothing unusual, he had said. Moriarty had commissioned him a painting of Garnett as San Sebastian, which had never been completed.

 

Sherlock’s visitor was the painter Duncan Forbes, who had been Frances Shaw’s friend.

He let him in and was surprised to note how little he had changed since the last time he had seen him. A tall, spare man with a leonine head of chestnut hair and a lush beard, Duncan had the same piercing grey stare and sardonic smile Sherlock remembered so well. He must have been the same age as John, he thought.

Mrs Hudson brought in a tray with tea and lemon cake, which Sherlock proceeded to serve with his customary brisk elegance.

“How is Mycroft?” Forbes asked, with pretend nonchalance.

“He’s Mycroft, so not much change there. He’s met someone, but from what I witnessed, he mostly behaves as if he were still on his own.”

“Have you ever thought,” Duncan said, “how strangely people connect with one another. It seems to me that people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”

“Are you suggesting that Mycroft is capable of real togetherness?” Sherlock asked, smirking.

“Perhaps,” the other man replied, with a wolfish grin. “And you. You were a dreamy slip of a thing, as I seem to recall, but I can see that you have tasted something different since then.”

Sherlock had not planned to confide in him, but now he could not help telling Forbes the history of John.

“Oh,” exclaimed Forbes, “you’ll see, they’ll never rest till they’ve pulled the man down and done him in. If he has refused to creep up into the middle classes, when he had a chance; and if he’s a man who stands up for his own sex regardless of class, then they’ll do him in. It’s the one thing they won’t let you be, straight and open in your sex. You can be as secretive as you like. In fact the more secretive you are the better they like it. It’s the one insane taboo left: sex as an open and vital thing. They won’t have it, and they’ll kill you before they’ll let you have it. You’ll see, they’ll hound that man down. And what’s he done, after all? He’s made love to another man who loved him back. Oh, they’ll hound the poor devil down.”

Sherlock had been to preoccupied with Moriarty and Anderson’s death to reflect on the politics of Tevershall village and their insane dislike for all fellows who tried to live and love outside of their class. His worry made him defiant.

“John and I will live in London, once this awful mess has been cleared. I will not let anyone hound him down. And he won’t either. He’s stronger than you imagine,” Sherlock chided.

Forbes smiled and took a sip of his tea.

“You wanted to talk to me about Frances,” he said, and folded his hands in his lap, ready to listen.

Sherlock explained about Lestrade and their suspicions and Duncan did not seem surprised.

“The last time I saw him he was distraught because of the Garnett boy. Have you seen a likeness of him? He is exquisitely beautiful and Frances was besotted with him. Their affair was satisfactory, as much as such entanglements can be when one of the parties is passionately in love while the other basks in that reflected light. It is merely a waiting game,” he said, shaking his head.

Sherlock reflected for a moment of his luck at finding such perfect reciprocity of emotions in his lover. They may have been suffering for their enforced estrangement, but their feelings were as firm and unwavering as the rock of Gibraltar.

“And how did Moriarty come on the scene?”

“I am not exactly sure, but I recall he’d been introduced to Shaw by Garnett, who had met him at a social gathering of some sort. My suspicions have always been that they made their acquaintance in dubious circumstances. Moriarty convinced the boy to introduce him to Frances, to whom he commissioned the San Sebastian painting. Nothing original in that setting; it has been depicted ad nauseam, but the pose is extremely suggestive: the nakedness, the hands tied above the boy’s head, the delight and pain of martyrdom. Frances wanted to be alone with Thomas while he painted him, but Moriarty insisted to stay and his presence was allowed because of the boy’s insistence.”

“You think he drove him crazy with jealousy so that he committed suicide?”

“Yes, that’s what we all thought and the police were informed of our suspicions, but Garnett insisted they did not do anything wrong and, after all, suicide is not a crime.”

For a terrible instant, Sherlock thought of Moriarty making John’s life impossible, leading him to self-destruction.

“Did you talk to Garnett after the fact?”

Duncan nodded.

“He couldn’t be prevailed upon saying a single thing about James Moriarty. Perhaps he was scared, but he merely seemed indifferent, as if the death of his lover meant nothing to him.”

“Could I talk to him? If you gave me an introduction, I could meet him as early as tomorrow. Time is of the essence, as I am sure you’ll understand.”

“I would love to help you, my dear boy. But Garnett left for the colonies soon after Shaw’s death. Or so I was told. He lived in rented lodgings and his landlady said he paid her handsomely and remove all his belongings.”

“What did he look like?”

“Aside from his flame-red hair, he was not dissimilar to you, my boy. Are you familiar with the Chatterton painting? The resemblance with Garnett is quite striking.”

“I seem to recall that was your type, too. Or am I mistaken?”

Forbes laughed heartily.

“Any Pre-Raphaelite acolyte worth his salt would love a model like Garnett. But I never asked him to pose for me, because I knew how much it would have hurt my friend. Jealousy is a horrible, demanding mistress.”

Sherlock became sombre, as he realised he’d drawn a blank.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you, but perhaps there will be other cases,” he said, and the younger man interrupted him. “Evelyn Rose. Did you know her?”

“By reputation, yes, but not in person. Hers was, and still is to this day, a close-knit circle; they don’t allow any stranger inside their inner sanctum.”

“The only other case is Peter Craven’s disappearance,” Sherlock added, a little disconsolately.

“But of course! Lady Eloise’s hapless consort; yes, I do remember it well. It happened soon after the war. They were both extremely young when they married. For a while, it was thought that he would inherit the title, as his older brother Richard had been reported missing in the trenches. Luckily, he came home in one piece, and Peter was free to marry and make a fool of himself, which he did in spades. His wife is a dear friend of my sister Letitia. I will send her a note presently, and hopefully you’ll be allowed to visit her tomorrow. A word of caution: she is young and naïve, and had no suspicions about her husband’s more, let’s say, unconventional practices. She did not believe what the police told her about Peter, poor soul. And to you, my dear boy: this Moriarty fellow wouldn’t stop at anything, it seems to me. Take good care of yourself, dear Sherlock.”

“Don’t worry about me, Duncan. I have already met the man and I know exactly what to expect.”

They finished their tea and shook hands warmly, as they said their goodbyes.

 

“My dear boy, you haven’t touched the cake! I wonder what that man of yours would say if he saw how thin you are.”

Sherlock had not told Mrs Hudson anything about his liaison with John, but the diminutive, elderly lady vaunted some superior knowledge that she must have gotten from his meddlesome brother.

“I see that my dear brother has not learnt to keep his mouth shut.”

 Mrs Hudson tilted her head to the side, birdlike, and clicked her tongue.

“Mycroft is a perfectly charming young man, but he is hardly the talkative sort. No, he did not tell me anything. But I wasn’t born yesterday and I know love when I see it. I hear the way you sigh to yourself, when you think I’m not watching. Your dear mother was the best of friends; she was of great help to me years ago, before you were born, when my wretched husband had an escapade with a French dancer. Well, that’s what she called herself, but I believe she didn’t do much dancing.”

Sherlock could barely refrain from smiling; his lips hurt with the effort of restraint.

“And mother helped to save your marriage?”

Mrs Hudson snorted and patted his knee.

“Certainly not, my dear boy. She made sure he never bothered me again. You see, I was the one with money and he was trying to have his cake and eat it too. Speaking of cake,” she said, and pushed the tray towards Sherlock, who grimaced and shook his head.

“If you don’t eat at least a slice, I won’t give you the letter that just arrived. It’s marked Tevershall and by the look of it, it’s filled with words you'll be anxious to read,” she said, and even had the audacity to wink at him.

He was about to tell her what he thought of her tricks, when he caught the steely glint in her eyes and decided it wasn’t worth his effort. He stuffed a large slice of cake into his mouth and looked at her with eloquently arched eyebrows. She waited for him swallow and handed him his prize.

It was, indeed, a letter from John.

 

_“Dearest Sherlock,_

_Your lawyer kept his word and I’m free again, even though I know it’s only for a short time. I’m staying at my mother’s, and we hardly say two words to each other, but that’s alright with me. I have asked Mary about Anderson, but she knows nothing and I’m sure she’s telling the truth. I sometimes sit in the Wellington pub and talk to the miners. As everybody says, the Midlands miners have got their hearts in the right place. But the rest of their anatomy must be in the wrong place, as you can’t get any sense out of them. The women talk a lot more than the men, nowadays, and they are a sight more cock-sure. The men are limp, they feel a doom somewhere, and they go about as if there was nothing to be done. Anyhow, nobody knows what should be done in spite of all the talk, the young ones get mad because they've no money to spend. If you could only tell them that living and spending isn’t the same thing! But it’s no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend. That’s the only way to solve the problem: train people to be able to live and love in handsomeness, without needing to spend. But you can’t do it. They’re all one-track minds nowadays. The colliers aren’t pagan, far from it. They're a sad lot, a deadened lot of men: dead to their fellow men, dead to life. Money poisons you when you’ve got it, and starves you when you haven’t._

_I'm sure you’re sick of all this, but I don't want to go on about myself, and I've nothing else happening to me. What I live for now is for you and me to live together. I'm afraid for you, really. I feel the devil in the air, and that rogue will try to get to you, my love. But I have immense trust in you. All the bad times that I have gone through, they haven’t been able to blow out my love of life. And they won't be able to blow out my wanting you or the passion there is between you and me. We'll be together soon. And though I'm anxious, I believe in your being with me. I believe in the flame between us. For me now, it’s the only thing in the world. I’ve got no real friends; only you. And now that flame is all I care about in my life; that’s what I abide by and will abide by, Victor and Moriarty, colliery companies and governments and the money-mass of people all notwithstanding. My soul flaps in this flame with you, like the peace of fucking. We fucked that flame into being.  How can men want wearisomely to philander. What a misery to be like Don Juan, and impotent to really care about that one special person._

_I could not ever think of anything but you, my love: your lovely body, your precious face, your sweet breath as we make love, your cries of pleasure and the infinite joy of holding you in my arms._

_I hope you don’t mind too much about Sir Victor. He seems happy enough from what I hear. And I suspect once he knows about me, he will want to spew you out as an abominable thing._

_I hesitate to ask you about that devil, for it pains me to not be there with you. Please, be extremely careful and let me know what steps you are undertaking._

_Well, so many words, because I can't touch you. If I could sleep with my arms round you, the ink could stay in the bottle._

_Now I can't even leave off writing to you._

_My beloved, I say good-night to you, a little sad, but with a hopeful heart._

_With infinite love,_

_John Hamish Watson”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for staying with me. Not too long now before the end.
> 
> Note: the "fucking" in John's letter is lifted straight from Lawrence's novel, so you can imagine how controversial it must have been at the time.
> 
> Next: Sherlock tries to find Peter Craven


	24. One Happy Moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock goes clubbing
> 
> The chapter's title is the poem by John Dryden mentioned in the story.
> 
> Many of the people and places mentioned in this chapter are real, only the dates have been tampered with a little (a lot). The poet John Dryden really used to live on the site of the infamous Club 43 and the owner, Kate Meyrick, was Irish.  
> David Tennant was indeed a famous aristocrat and socialite and was married to an actress named Hermione. You couldn't make it up.

“My feet are cold,” Sherlock whined.

Indeed, he felt oddly chilly despite the warm, muggy night outside.

He was in bed, nestled underneath the covers.

“I will massage them for you, darling,” John replied, and started doing just that.

“You know what else works wonders for cold extremities?”

“What, my dear?”

John’s voice came from far away, and Sherlock wanted him to come closer.

“Make love to me,” he pleaded, and the next thing he knew, John was on top of him, and his fingers were caressing Sherlock’s buttocks, softly at first then more insistently, trying to reach his secret place.

He opened up to his lover and let him take his pleasure, invited him inside, kept him there, arching, writhing, moaning.

When he woke up from his sensual dream, dissatisfied and alone, he realised that the sheet enveloping him was conspicuously wet from his emissions.

To his shame and displeasure, this occurrence was becoming more frequent than ever. Climaxing in his sleep like a callow youth!

He got up in a huff, wearing the top blanket like a toga, and made his teetering way towards the sitting room.

The first post had arrived, and with it the note he was expecting from Lady Eloise Ferrars.

Duncan had kept his word and his sister Letitia must have interceded in Sherlock’s favour.

He was expected at her town house in Pall Mall in the afternoon, at tea time.

Sherlock wondered is she would really be as naïve as Duncan had intimated or rather if the disappearance of her husband had turned her into one of the bright young things of whom there was so much talk in the gossip column of the Daily Express.

From his exile in the Midlands, Sherlock had barely been apprised of this exciting new incarnation of the London high society: the wild parties, the carpe diem attitude and the reckless search for pleasure.

Had he been young and unattached, he would have plunged inside it like a duck in a pond. Instead, he observed this new phenomenon with the detachment of al old roué, who’s already been there and done that.

That didn’t prevent him from imagining himself and John drinking cocktails and dancing till the small hours, falling into bed at dawn, both of them intoxicated, making rather frenetic love in between sipping champagne from the bottle. It would have been perfectly heavenly, he sighed.

“Sherlock, are you presentable?” Mrs Hudson called from the landing.

“Not exactly,” he replied, opening the door.

The elderly lady winced as she took in his dishevelled appearance, but she didn’t say anything, merely grimacing at the sour smell he was exuding.

“Your dear father stopped by on his way to the Academy,” she started, only to be immediately interrupted by the young man.

“Not possible: we are quite far both from Kensington and the Academy.”

“All the same,” she continued, undeterred, “he was here and left this note for you. He mentioned he would like to have luncheon with you. At the Ritz,” she added, with sparkling eyes.

“Perhaps you’d like to go in my stead. You’re very welcome, I assure you,” he drawled.

“Silly boy, of course I’m not going! Dear Sir Malcolm is really anxious to see you. Now, have a proper bath and make yourself decent. I will prepare you a pot of strong tea,” she replied, and marched down the stairs like a soldier on parade day.

 

Sir Malcolm was still handsome and robust, though just a little afraid of the new world that had sprung up around him. He was moderately stout, and had stout thighs, but they were still strong and well-knit, the thighs of a healthy man who had taken his pleasure in life.

As they ate their chicken and bacon in parsley sauce, Sherlock confided in his father.

“You see, Father, he was Victor’s game-keeper: but he was an officer in the army in India. Only he is like Colonel C. E. Florence, who preferred to become a private soldier again.”

Sir Malcolm, however, had no sympathy with the unsatisfactory mysticism of the famous C. E. Florence. He saw too much advertisement behind all the humility. It looked just like the sort of conceit the knight most loathed, the conceit of self-abasement. He was, of course, quite wrong as John, had he but known him, shared his dislike of feigned humility.

“Where did your game-keeper spring from?” asked Sir Malcolm irritably.

“He was a collier’s son in Tevershall. But he’s absolutely perfect for me.”

The knighted artist became more angry.

“Looks to me like a gold-digger,” he said. “And you’re a pretty easy gold-mine, apparently.”

“No, Father, it’s not like that. You’d know if you saw him. He’s a man. Victor always detested him for not being humble.”

“Apparently he had a good instinct, for once.”

What Sir Malcolm could not bear was the scandal of his son’s having an intrigue with a game-keeper, and one who had just been accused of murder. He did not mind the intrigue: he minded the scandal.

“I care nothing about the fellow. He’s evidently been able to get round you all right. But, by God, think of all the talk. Think of your brother’s career.”

“Mycroft met him and he liked him,” said Sherlock. “And anyway, I will find the culprit and all will be well. Besides, everything is another man’s fault.”

“Another man’s! What other man?”

“James Moriarty. He is a friend of Victor’s.”

“And he’s a fairly well-known writer. He’s a man I’ve heard a lot about, most of it not good. Why, you’ve never even had an affair with him, have you?” he asked, with a sudden intuitive leap.

“I did, but only briefly. Victor loved me to be near him, but not to touch him.”

“My God, what a generation! Contriving, conniving; conniving, contriving! Makes a man think he’s lived too long.”

“Come, Father, if you haven’t done a good deal of contriving and conniving in your time, you may talk.”

“But it was different, I assure you.”

“It’s _always_ different.”

“You will introduce me to this fellow, when the police are done with him,” Sir Malcolm added, with a return of his customary irony.

“I most certainly will and I am convinced you will like one another.”

They ate their pudding and drank their coffee while conversing of mutual acquaintances and the emerging artists championed by the Academy. Sherlock had not expected to enjoy himself, but his father was bracing company after the insubstantial chatter he had endured at Fansworth.

 

Ferrars House was a an imposing Regency building located in Carlton Terrace, tucked behind Pall Mall and close to the Royal Society.

Duncan description seemed accurate: Lady Eloise had not succumbed to the lure of modernity. She was a diaphanous creature clad in pale pink chiffon, with well coiffed, long blonde tresses. Her eyes were the colour of Wedgwood Jasperware and her white complexion was flawless. She had an air of languor about her which was accentuated by the absolute stillness of her posture.

They were sitting in a vast salon on the first floor: the walls were adorned with pictures among whose Sherlock recognised a couple by Duncan Forbes and one by Waterhouse. The window was open and the pleasant afternoon air wafted in, redolent of the fragrance of roses.

The afternoon tea at the Ferrars would have pleased Mrs Hudson: there were scones served with butter and Scotch marmalade, miniature cucumber sandwiches and an assortment of cakes and buns that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Savoy.

Sherlock ate a sandwich out of politeness, while his host displayed a surprising appetite. Not as ethereal as she seemed then.

“Letitia said that you are interested in Peter’s disappearance,” she said, her lovely eyes filling with emotion.

“I am convinced there is something more to it than what was said at the time. I assume you did your utmost to find him.”

“Oh yes, we tried everything, including a private detective, but to no avail. It seems such a long time ago, but it’s only little more than a year. And at times, it feels like yesterday. Do you understand?” she asked, dreamily.

“Yes, I rather do,” he replied, truthfully.

“I never liked Brain Howard and his Hypocrites Club,” she blurted out, almost expecting Sherlock to refute her words. He merely blinked, uncomprehending.

“When I married Peter he was fresh out of Oxford. He was close friends with Brian and Terence Greenidge and the Tennant brothers. David is alright, but I can’t quite stomach Stephen, although I have to say that I find Siegfried’s poetry simply marvellous.”

Sherlock was older than all the people mentioned – except for Sassoon, of course, who was around John’s age – but he knew of them. He had been at Cambridge, but he’d heard about the infamous Club through some of his Kensington acquaintances. He had been told of their debauchery and decadence.

“And what about James Moriarty?” he asked, nonchalantly.

“The playwright? Yes, he did mention him sometimes. He said his friends laughed at him behind his back because he was Irish and a nouveau riche. I rebuked him for that; I told him there was no place for snobbery after the war.  Peter never mentioned him to me again.”

“I heard your husband was the sociable sort,” he suggested, not wanting to offend her.

“He loved to entertain. We gave the most magnificent parties, nothing of that “bring a bottle” nonsense. Once, I consented to join in one of those silly scavenger hunts and ended up at the Dorchester asking for shoe-polish: it was humiliating. I told Peter I would never do that again. From that night, our social lives diverged a little. There were things we did together and others that we… didn’t.”

“And those others, do you have any idea about his… frequentation?”

“He tried to keep it secret, but I know he went to Club 43 in Gerrard Street. That dreadful woman! I am sorry, I don’t mean to appear so critical of my dear husband, but I blame his friends mostly. He was such a gentle, accommodating soul, poor Peter.”

“The woman is the proprietor of the Club, I take it.”

“Yes. She’s an Irish woman and calls herself Kate Meyrick, though I doubt that’s her real name.”

An Irish woman, Sherlock exulted. Finally, he was getting somewhere.

“Would I need an introduction to visit the Club?” he asked.

“Not if you are a member of the aristocracy,” she replied, smiling, and looked him up and down, eloquently. “But they are quite strict about their dress code. You will need some updating, my dear.”

 

Thus, Sherlock spent the rest of the afternoon in Bond Street, being fitted for new tuxedos and lounge suits, and picking up some off the peg models, a practice that apparently was all the rage with young society men who did not have the patience to wait for bespoke. Another feature which was de rigueur was the zip, which Sherlock found extremely practical. He imagined owning a one-piece garment held together by a series of zips that his lover could undo, uncovering patches of skins in the most strategic places: an enticing, promising idea.

He had a quick, cold supper of salmon mousse and prawns which his cleaning-cooking lady had left for him in the refrigerating cabinet and after a wash and a shave, he prepared for the night out: he opted for formal black tie but with a wide legged trouser and two-tone shoes. He let his hair un-styled and the overall effect was one of bohemian elegance.

“This would have to do,” he said to his reflection in the mirror. He grabbed his top hat and silk cape and strode out into Baker Street in search of a cab.

 

Soho was teeming with its night crowd, a sea of eager, famished faces that vividly reminded Sherlock of his younger years.

The 43 was a resounding success and it was easy to see why: it was intimate without being stuffy and gay but not gaudy. Its best features were the spacious dancing floor and the lobby, which seemed entirely made of shimmery glass.

He gave his card at the entrance, checked in his hat and cape and made his way to the bar, where he ordered a glass of champagne.

The noise was deafening: a cacophony of voices, music and tapping feet.

Buried in the countryside as he’d been, Sherlock had been bypassed by the mysterious, dual phenomenon of jazz music and girls with bobs and flapper dresses.

He felt a little dizzy and leaned against the glass-topped counter to regain his balance.

“Twas a kind look of yours that has undone me. Love has in store for me one happy minute,” a cultured, high-pitched voice said, close to his ear.

He turned to look at its owner and was faced with a willowy, effete blonde man with gelled hair, pale round eyes and a fleshy mouth that was obscenely out of place on that seraphic face. His pupils spoke of recent drug consumption.

“John Dryden,” he said, puffing on a thin cigarette. “One of his poems that is. Do you know this place used to be his humble abode? How the mighty have fallen and all that. Do I know you, ducky?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure yet. Sherlock Holmes,” he said, extending his gloveless hand.

“Lord Trevor! I have heard of you. Your husband is the celebrated writer Sir Victor Trevor. I am myself a mere ink-slinger, but not for want of trying. Harold Acton, at your service.”

Sherlock offered him a drink, which the man accepted with a benevolent smile. Acton was observing the dark-haired man with an unconcealed admiration that was flattering but also rather unsettling.

“What is a fey creature like you doing here without a chaperon?” he asked, touching Sherlock’s hand with the bottom of his glass.

“Fey?”

“Mysterious, refined.”

“I believe it also means foretelling disaster,” Sherlock joked.

“A face like yours is certain to spell ruin for the men who gaze upon it too long.”

He knew Acton was being facetious, but it struck an ominous chord in him, reminding him of John and the shadow of death hovering above him.

“I forbid you to spoil our guest’s pleasure, dear Acton. Retire to your chambers, I’ll have no more of this,” the woman said, and from the lilt in her voice, he correctly guessed her to be Mrs Kate Meyrick.

“Dear Ma, it is my boundless honour to introduce you to Lord Trevor.”

“Sherlock, please,” he said, deploying his charm and kissing the woman’s small, strong hand.

She was a pretty, shapely creature, with auburn hair styled in a fashionable bob and wearing a long black dress embroidered with a quantity of tiny jet beads. Her eyes were as dark as the beads, and her mouth was thin-lipped and made up in bright red. Mrs Meyrick radiated an air of affability, but the quickness of her gaze and the sphinx-like quality of her smile told a different story.

“I hope our little friend here has not importuned you. He can be rather too welcoming, at times.”

Sherlock shook his head and glanced at Acton, who had already transferred his attentions to the crowd congregating around the dance floor.

“Come join us, later” he said, vaguely, as he slunk away.

“You have a spiffing place here. One of my friends used to rave about it.”

She waited in silence, her lips still curved into a smile.

“Peter Craven. He was a family acquaintance.”

“He was a dear boy. We were all distressed when he disappeared,” she replied, looking anything but.

“He was rather careless, when it came to money. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the cause of his troubles.” He immediately noticed her relaxing, even though it was imperceptible.

“Yes, so I heard. I shouldn’t mind, you’d think, being in the business I am in. But, I do, believe me, I do.”  
And Sherlock did believe her. He looked at her closely and read in her countenance the history of deprivation and cunning that she had to overcome to achieve the measure of success she was enjoying at present.

“But Peter wasn’t the only friend who told me of you. There’s another, closer, one. James Moriarty,” he offered, and saw her eyes light up.

“We go way back, that boy and I,” she said, pensively. “I owe him a lot and he’s never disappointed me. I wish he were here, so we could have a drink together, but alas his success has taken him to the States, on a promotional tour.”

Sherlock was well aware of Moriarty’s absence, which made the investigation considerably easy for him but also rendered the possibility of an arrest more remote.

Time to try my luck, he thought. She would be moving away soon, to entertain the other regulars, so there wasn’t any time to waste.

“James told me of the other place. You see, I was in Paris before the war and there are things I dearly miss, that I,” he leaned closer to whisper in her ear “compulsively need.”

She gave him an intense, searching look and seemed to come to a conclusion.

“Come,” she said and he followed her through rooms and corridors into the bowels of the club, where her private office was. It was a light, spartan room furnished simply with a sturdy desk, a chair and large settee. To complete the set, a small drinks cabinet and a low coffee table.

“Sit down, please,” she said, and sat next to him on the settee.

“My conditions are simple: you tell no one about the other club, it is in your interest as well as mine. For some unfathomable reason, the police are against us folks having a bit of fun and there’s that sanctimonious Jix who would have us saying prayers and singing hymns in church. But that’s by the by; what I mean is if you get caught there, they will throw you in gaol, Lord or pauper they won’t care.”

“My lips are sealed,” Sherlock said.

“We call it club 53 and we move around; to dodge the fuzz, as I said. I won’t ask you what you need, but there will be plenty of it to go round, whatever it is. Thing is, the next party is a dress-up one, fellows dressed as ladies and all that jazz. Brian’s idea and I can never say no to him. You have the lips and body for it, so it shouldn’t be a bother. What do you say?” she asked, handing him a cigarette, which he took, eagerly.

“Spiffing,” he replied, beaming, as she offered him a light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and commenting!!!!
> 
> Next: Sherlock dresses up. Oh, and there's a pool.


	25. All the Sugars of Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock goes to a party.
> 
> The chapter's title is a quote from the memoir of the real Brian Howard
> 
>  
> 
> “But lest their mirth should ring a trifle hollow  
> Each lovely nymph with dressing-gowned Apollo”  
> This is a verse from a poem titled "Pyjama Party" by F.R. Holmes (I could not resist)

“I’m not dressing up as a lady. Of all the madcap ideas, this one takes the cake! Your brother warned me and I wouldn’t listen. Besides, Vice is trying to close that Soho lot down and I’m not keen on interfering with their work. It’s not my division, you see?”

They were sitting in Lestrade's dark-panelled office, and the Inspector was looking at Sherlock with an air of utter amazement on his tired face.

“Well, it seems to me your chaps are not doing anything much at all! Why, only last night I was…”

“Don’t tell me; the least I know, the better it is.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed and his lips tightened.

“You could lend me your sergeant. He’s a bright fellow and I bet he’s keen on interfering with anyone’s work.”

Unexpectedly, the Inspector broke into laugher.

“You may be right. That boy has the bit between his teeth. And he admires you, God knows why. But don’t you think it would be a hindrance, having a working class lad among that uppity crowd. He’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”

“What an interesting choice of idioms, my dear man. I’d normally agree with you, but this no ordinary party; we are speaking of something quite different. I believe they do not object to - how shall I put it - _new faces_ at these revels. Provided he can hold his liquor and keep his mouth shut.”

Lestrade shook his head in silence, but he was evidently pondering Sherlock’s suggestion.

“And you say someone among that crowd knows what happened to Peter Craven? We interrogated everyone in his closest circle and they all said the same thing: he left the 43 never to be seen again. I know Lady Ferrars hired a private investigator and he drew a blank, too.”

Sherlock was fidgeting, his eyes flashing and green as a cat’s.

“I believe some of them are telling the truth, but the others know something and have been sworn to secrecy. But if I become one of them and catch them at it, so to speak, they may just reveal the truth. Moriarty is guilty, I’m certain of it. For heaven’s sake, John’s life is in danger and time is ticking away!”

“He can’t drink on duty. And why would you want an off-duty policeman at your side? I should think it would cramp your style.”

“I’d like someone to watch over me. I fear I may become a trifle intoxicated, as the night unfolds. And unless I play the game, nothing will come of it.”

Lestrade sighed and pressed a button on his desk.

“Yes, Sir?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Send Dimmock in to see me.”

 

What Sherlock had wanted to relate to the Inspector before the latter stopped him, was his visit to the Gargoyle Club in Dean Street.

After Ma Meyrick had released him back into the wilderness of 43, Acton had swooped in and dragged Sherlock onto the dance floor.

One of the things even Victor didn’t know about his husband, and that he hadn’t had time to tell John, was that Sherlock simply _loved_ dancing.

He had never tried the Charleston or the shimmy, but he was a quick learner and two songs later he had mastered the moves and found the experience exhilarating.

Acton’s friends was  a group of young, wealthy socialites who partied the nights away and as dawn approached, one of them proposed to reconvene in David Tennant’s joint.

Sherlock had never set eyes on anything quite as astounding: the walls were entirely lined with slivers of broken mirrors and adorned with colourful nude paintings. It was exciting, provocative art, and when he asked about the artist, he was told his name was Matisse and that he was Tennant’s friend.

The night that followed was a whirlwind of music and drinking and it had taken all of Sherlock’s willpower to resist the lure of sensual hedonism and the manifold temptations that the place offered in spades.

He knew he fancied admiration, but he also didn’t want any hand on him that wasn’t John’s. As his brother knew only too well – and Sherlock _did not_ need a stiff lecture from Mycroft – he was easy prey to the combined effects of alcohol and drugs, and he feared that club 53 would be a mountain too steep to climb under his own steam.

After all, these young things were inured to it, while he’d been buried alive for so long his limbs and brain had barely started to revive.

 

Letitia Forbes no longer was the shy little girl Sherlock remembered.

She sported a wavy shingled bob and wore a black and white trouser suit that enhanced her slim waist and made her look taller. Sherlock was going to rent his costume, but he would not force that indignity on poor Dimmock.

He had thought of Letitia as he wanted to ask her a few questions and because he knew she’d had a tendre for him when they were younger.

“What have they done to you, my darling? You look positively haggard. The Midlands, you say? The mere name has an ominous ring to it, don’t you find? What do you say to a gasper? No? A cup of coffee perhaps?”

She flitted around the untidy room like a bumblebee in a summerhouse.

Her lodgings were in the unfashionable part of Mayfair, nearer Piccadilly. Located on the top floor of a tall Georgian building, with a pleasant stuccoed front and pretty sash windows, it had bright interiors and induced in one the giddy sensation of being able to touch the sky.

Being the sister of an artist, Letitia cultivated an air of fashionable vagueness coupled with a sardonic wit.

She bade him sit down on an alarming piece of furniture that looked like a settee, but was encased inside a cabinet with side shelves.

Once the coffee – black and strong – was served, Letitia sat next to him and gave him a long, inquisitive look.

“It’s the Brian Howard coterie, isn’t it?” she asked, with a lopsided grimace. “I fell in with that crowd for a while, but they do tire one in the end, don’t they? All that frenetic running to and fro becomes pointless as one grows older. Listen to me, barely past twenty-five and already talking like a matron.”

Sherlock swallowed the inky mixture and nodded.

“Lady Ferrars mentioned something called a scavenger hunt.”

“Eloise hated those games, and after a while I did too. But what spelled the end for me was their connection with Brilliant Chang.”

“Drugs,” he suggested, touching his tongue to the roof of his mouth, which had been numbed by the strong drink.

She arched her eyebrows.

“You know him?”

“Merely a guess: a Chinese fellow with a suggestive sobriquet suggests a delinquent of some sort. And the chap I met the other night displayed all the symptoms consistent with drug usage.”

She surprised him by not asking the chap’s name.

“He’s a dangerous man, but I always suspected he isn’t acting on his own.”

“Why do you say that?”

She extracted a small hip flask from her trouser pocket and poured some drops of clear liquid in her coffee.

“He owns a restaurant in Regent Street. I used to dine there and one night Chang left me a note in which he purported that he admired me and would like to have a quiet dinner with me sometime. Zita Jungman was with me and she explained everything.”

“Rather a foolhardy approach, I agree. Do you know James Moriarty?”

She took a cigarette out of a silver case and lit it with extreme care.

“I have met him once or twice, but I can’t say I know him. He was seeing a model named Thomas Garnett.”

“Your brother told me about him and his painter friend who committed suicide.”

“Duncan was miserable about it, but he doesn’t like to show it.”

Lack of sleep, smoke and caffeine were making Sherlock a bit queasy.

“Peter Craven?” he said, clearing his throat.

“He was a dear, but no character at all,” she replied. “He spent money like water and was too fond of gambling.”

He waited, looking her in the eye. She shrugged her thin, boyish shoulders and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“I’m not sure. There were rumours, but I ignored them.”

Again, he didn’t say anything.

“They said he had affairs with men. But you know what that Oxford set is like: they all sleep with one another; but it means nothing to them. They only consider it an extension of their friendship. I think Eloise knew but turned a blind eye.”

“Was he in love with anyone in particular?”

“He only loved Eloise. I’m absolutely certain of it,” she said, defiantly.

“I believe you,” he said. “This is not why I came to see you, dear Letitia. I have been invited to a party and I would like to borrow some of your finery.”

She stared at him, eloquently.

“Not for myself, for a friend of mine. I promise you it is for a reputable cause.”

“What a ghastly word!” she exclaimed, and stubbed her cigarette in the oyster-shaped ashtray. “Is your friend slim or robust?” she enquired.

“Short and slight, but I suspect he won’t wish to show his legs. Or his décolletage,” he replied.

“You’ve picked a demure lover,” she observed. “Not what I imagined.”

“I assure you my lover is not demure… or slight,” he countered, with an arch smile.

“Have you thought about your costume?”

Sherlock’s expression went from mischievous to dreamy. 

“I simply adore the ballet,” he sighed.

Letitia laughed and led him to her boudoir.

 

Dimmock had tried valiantly not to gape, but the vision was simply too preposterous to permit any other reaction.

He had arrived at Baker Street with every intention of convincing Lord Trevor to change his mind, but had not expected the man to be already dressed for the evening.

“Dear fellow, please tell me the condition is not permanent. It would be most inconvenient to carouse with a dislocated mandible.”

“Your Lordship,” mumbled Dimmock, his head swimming for the shock.

“Have a glass of sherry, it will help,” Sherlock said, indicating a bottle and a glass set on the low table by the settee. He’d guessed the poor man would need to steady his nerves.

The sergeant served himself a generous dose and swallowed it down in two gulps.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. Not on a fellow, not on anyone! It doesn’t seem decent,” he chided.

“Mrs Hudson, my landlady, said almost the exact same words. She couldn’t take her eyes off me, though,” Sherlock replied, smirking.

 

He was, indeed, a formidable sight.

 

The knee-length culottes he was wearing were entirely decorated with long black feathers and wide-legged enough to resemble a skirt. There were feathers attached to his bustier and on the hairpiece that rested on his curls. Sherlock’s eyelids had been blackened with the aide of a crayon and his lips painted a deep shade of purple. His white skin was made even paler by shimmery ivory powder. His calves were encased in black gauze tights and his feet in a pair of ballet shoes topped by feathery ribbons.

His long, white neck rose from that sea of darkness like a Doric column erected in Hades.

If John Watson had been there in lieu of Frank Dimmock, Sherlock would have been covered in bruises and semi-unconscious with delirious pleasure.

“I really don’t think,” Dimmock started, unable to find the word to say he didn’t want to be transformed in the same outrageous way.

“Don’t fret, dear fellow, all will be fine. Have another sherry,” Sherlock said, seemingly reading the boy’s mind.

 

By the time they left Baker Street, Dimmock was pleasantly tipsy and not as nervous about his role in the charade.

The peacock-blue satin trouser dress he was wearing had a forgiving sash draped low on his hips to preserve his modesty and bouffant sleeves that hid his masculine biceps. The blue pumps Sherlock had rented for him were flat and comfortable. A chiffon scarf enveloped his head, making resemble a rather sophisticated gipsy. His long-lashed eyes had been left untouched and so had his pale, clean-shaven face, but his lips were painted a shocking coral red. The result was unsettling, but not unduly so.

A pair of silk capes hid their outfits almost completely, but Dimmock shouldn’t have bothered worrying, as the cab driver was used to that and worse. The upper classes, he thought, and shrugged inwardly at that fickle, unsubstantial world he had just caught a glimpse of.

 

Their destination was as unusual as their attire.

The Haggerston Baths in Hackney, a tripartite redbrick construction with an imposing gilded Golden Hind weathervane, was an incongruous sight in a neighbourhood of slums.

The crumbling buildings were bathed in darkness and silence, while one sensed the unusual flurry of activity, hive-like, inside the august walls of the public pool house.

The windows were obscured by shutters, but a low, buzzing noise - akin to the sound of car engines priming before acceleration – was making them vibrate.

No one was manning the door and a poster was stuck to it, which recited:

_“But lest their mirth should ring a trifle hollow_

_Each lovely nymph with dressing-gowned Apollo”_

“Shall we?” he asked a bemused Dimmock. “And remember: talk as little as possible, keep your wits about you and call me Sherlock; or darling, if you prefer.”

The sergeant blushed and looked pained for a moment, but he soon rallied.

“Into battle,” he replied, and opened the door, letting Sherlock in first.

 

The vaulted ceiling of the pool had been decorated with dozens of oriental lanterns, while the water had been drained to allow the space to be used as a dance floor. A swing band played gaily, his musicians dressed up in Eton garb: suits, stiff collars and school caps.

Someone at the entrance took their capes, but they were both too stunned to notice.

A tall man, with earrings and wavy blonde hair sauntered by, entirely clad in white satin.

“Who are you supposed to be?” Sherlock couldn’t refrain from asking.

“Marie, Queen of Roumania,” he fluted, his luscious mouth curved in a pout: an exquisite without a trace of masculinity.

“Stephen Tennant,” he explained, with evident distaste at the blandness of his real name, and without waiting for their reply, he glided away in a rarefied cloud of gold powder.

“My dear Sherlock, you are simply divine! And who is your little friend here? Lovely eyes,” Acton remarked, touching the tip of his fingers to Dimmock’s eyelashes. He was in full flapper-dress regalia, with a black, bobbed wig with fringe, rows of pearl necklaces and a long cigarette holder poised in his elegant hands.

“Frank, and thanks, I suppose,” Dimmock replied, lighting a cigarette from Acton’s one.

“Come and meet the gang,” the latter quipped, as he snaked his way through the raucous crowd.

From what Sherlock had gleaned from the history books, this gathering wasn’t dissimilar to a Roman bacchanalia: the tables were replete with vittles – red caviar, lobsters, salmon, ham, salads, pink and red blancmanges – and libations – gin, whisky, champagne and a vast array of cocktails being prepared by a be-jewelled youth. There was an atmosphere of reckless abandon, of insane joy and restless sensuality that reverberated all around them; like a dangerous animal, crouched and ready to spring upon the unsuspecting revellers.

Maybe Sherlock really was fey, as he could sense peril close by, hiding in the wings; a beast sharpening its claws.

They gang was a group of girls and boys with haughty, aristocratic faces and names like Beverley, Baby, Evelyn and Cecil. The famed Brian Howard had floppy eyes and a fish face and his princely attire did nothing to attenuate the affected boredom of his countenance.

Sherlock had already met some of them at the Gargoyle, and Dimmock did his best to take the introductions in his stride.

 

They started a desultory conversation which was mostly noise and laughter.

Baby, a freckled, button-nosed angel dressed as a page, with a flowery jerkin whose main feature was an enormous pussycat bow, dragged Dimmock onto the dance floor with decision, intimating “You aren’t a corn-shredder, I hope,” to which he replied, “Let’s hope not.”

“Youth is simply everything, isn’t it? These old bores who sit down at home scowling at us are so frightfully dull,” the boy named Cecil declared, caressing his elaborate Marie-Antoinette wig.

Sherlock thought of his husband, maimed in the war, where he had fought to preserve the world of these flippant children, and shook his be-feathered head.

“I don’t know that I agree with you, darling,” he drawled, to remove the sting from his reply. “After all, who would build us bathhouses if not these old bores?”

“You are very wise for a swan, my love. I say, isn’t your boyfriend lucky! Is he the sharing sort, I wonder?”

“Very flattered, I am sure, but isn’t there some more fun to be had before the… other fun?” he winked nervously, telegraphing a message of manic need.

“To think that tucked away in those capacious pockets lay a little folded slip of paper, or a little bottle, containing all the sugars of hell,” Howard declared, his enervated face suddenly coming alive. A girl named Loelia, dressed as Romeo in a doublet and breeches, pretended to swoon at her friend’s words.

“I think our swan needs to wet his beak first,” Acton smirked, leading Sherlock towards a side door leading to the slipper baths.

He had read about bathtub gin in the Daily Express, but he had imagined it to be a figure of speech. The claw-foot bath was filled to the brim with the clear liquid, reeking of pure alcohol and juniper berries. A crowd of intoxicated people were sprawled on the tiled floor, sipping their poison from large glasses, which they refilled as soon as they were empty. Couples were kissing and rapidly progressing toward intimacy, and some had congregated in groups and were more than half-way into a public orgy.

Sherlock accepted the proffered glass, averting his eyes from the writhing bodies lying at his feet.

“I heard bath gin can be deadly,” Sherlock whispered.

“Life without it is a damn sight deadlier,” Acton quipped, caressing the feathers on Sherlock’s chest. The latter felt the tickling in his nipples and, together with the strong beverage, it tugged at his insides, stoking the fire in his groin, leaving him at the mercy of his body for a long while. He missed John so intensely it physically hurt; he nearly wailed from frustration, biting down on his glossy lower lip.

“You have it bad, my pretty,” the other man said, mistaking the nature of his misery.

“Ma said there would be plenty to go around,” he murmured in a trembling voice that wasn’t entirely feigned.

“Come with me,” Acton said.

The long corridor was flanked by rows of slipper baths, where an almost identical spectacle was being played, one of drinking and wantonness.

They reached a rusted iron door at the end of it with a “keep out” sign pinned on.

“The sugars of hell,” Harold smirked, raising his glass in a toast, as he turned the squeaky handle and invited Sherlock into the chlorinated darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Sherlock learns the truth
> 
> Thanks for staying with me and leaving kudos/ comments!!!!!


	26. Here Hang your Hopes, Your Dreams, Your Might Have Beens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock learns the truth
> 
> Just a short one, but the next one is being written as we speak...
> 
> This chapter's title is from "The Goose, The Crow and The Cross Bones Portal" by John Constable
> 
> "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" is a quote from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"
> 
> Please see notes at the end

Sherlock did not know what he had expected, but after the decadence of the slipper baths and the decayed stated of the door they had just opened, he had not anticipated the rarefied atmosphere that lay behind that virtual curtain.

Harold led the way down a flight of mouldy steps into an area with the same layout as the one above it: a long corridor flanked by small, open cabins.

The gin baths were replaces by beds, armchairs and chaises longues on which people lay, some in a stupor, others in crises of mirth or tears.

The music was sensual and plaintive, with an obsessive, desperate edge to it. The upstairs lanterns were replaced by gas-lamps and candles, but Sherlock could still discern the dank, musty walls, whose greenish tinge reminded one of the mythical Atlantis. They were creatures of the underground, wading through wreckage and seaweeds.

Letitia had not been wrong on Chang not being a lone operator: a number of Chinese attendants, clad in business-like tuxedos, were offering cocaine, heroin, veronal, morphine and leaf-opium on beautiful lacquered trays.

“She wasn’t lying,” he whispered, and Acton’s smile was smug like the entire enterprise depended on him.

“Ma is the real deal, ducky. You can trust her with your pretty feathers, your Lordship.”

His tone was laced with a sarcasm that immediately alarmed Sherlock. The gin was slowly getting the better of him, and his speech was beginning to slur.

“What is your poison,” he asked, but when he turned his Virgil had disappeared, leaving him alone in that mildewy Inferno.

“Lord Trevor, if you care to follow me,” said a voice in his ear. He jumped, as he had not heard the attendant approach.

He vaguely wondered where Dimmock was, but he didn’t have the energy to pursue the thought. It floated up above him, like a dissolving vapour.

The corridor seemed to taper and darken, but it may have been the milky film that was impeding his vision. “Poisonous gin”, he mumbled, and a twinge of fear went through him, and froze him cold. Dimly, he hoped the effect would wane once he was in the presence of his adversary.

“Here you are, at last.”

Such an overly dramatic gambit, Sherlock thought, and he giggled like the little maid from The Mikado.

“You’ve tried our heavenly brew,” the man said.

“Hardly heavenly, my fellow; ghastly sewer aftertaste, if you don’t mind me saying,” he replied, trying to contain his unwanted hilarity.

Oddly, that cubicle had a door, and it was being locked by the stranger whose face he still had not seen. The man deposed the tray on a wooden table.

“Sit down,” he commanded. There was no mistaking it for anything but an order. In his mind, Sherlock meant to resist, to struggle, but somehow he couldn’t.

For the fraction of an instant, he thought he was losing his reason or even his life.

The man was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and his features were hidden, only the barest glimpse of a bluish gaze and blonde locks.

A strange terror took hold of him, unholy and primeval, such as the ancients must have felt when confronted with thunderstorms and earthquakes.

He didn’t want to know, not anymore.

“I’d like to leave, if you don’t mind,” he said, and his voice trembled.

“Black cherries and cream,” the man whispered, “beautiful.”

“John,” Sherlock croaked, his throat so tight he could hardly breathe. “It can’t be… you can’t be here.”

“Why not? You wrote to me, remember? I asked you to tell me what steps you were undertaking and you readily obliged; like the obedient little lamb that you are,” John’s voice said, deep and cruel. Sherlock’s world was upside down, a vessel adrift in the ocean, deprived of its Northern Star.

“But you told me, you promised… that we would be together for the rest of our lives,” he pleaded, the artificial mirth replaced by black despair.

“Isn’t it what Your Lordship wanted to hear? You demanded a fairytale from your underling and I offered it to you on a silver platter, my Lord.”

“Don’t call me that, please, John… why? Why?” he screamed, unable to control the madness that was invading his very soul.

“Why? Because I could, so I did. You were so easy, dear Sherlock, very little fun, to tell the truth. Ready for the plucking, you were,” John laughed, a hollow, pitiless chuckle. “You fell into my arms like the right strumpet you are. Poor Sir Victor, what a poor bargain he made when he married you.”

“You said we had found each other, that I was made for you,” Sherlock cried, and suddenly he felt naked and ridiculous in his costume, and looked around for a piece of cloth to cover himself up with.

“Words, your Lordship, are easily said, with the right inducement,” the man extended a hand to grasp Sherlock’s groin, in a lewd, loveless gesture.

“I don’t understand, why would you murder Anderson? And Moriarty… his Greek servant…the laudanum… it is impossible, you couldn’t… you wouldn’t,” he said, brokenly, but in his mind, unbidden, a pattern was emerging of a horrible design, conceived in a faraway past, when Sherlock wasn’t even a distant twinkle in Victor’s heart.

John removed his hat and looked at the younger man with dead, unfeeling eyes.

“You are starting to see, aren’t you, my pretty? Aye, the night is darkest just before the lights of dawn. Words and more words: it’s all the likes of you seem to want.”

Sherlock felt entirely hollow, as light and leaden at once, as if all his feathers had been dipped in tar.

“Your hatred for the masters went deeper than you openly acknowledged. You resented Victor and his father and when you returned from the war you decided to exact your revenge and James Moriarty was your accomplice,” he recited. John smiled and shook his head, minutely.

“No, more than that: he was your instrument. The roles are reversed: what I thought of him, I have to pin on you, instead. He wrote what you dictated, took what you instructed him to; when he strangled, yours was the hand that squeezed the life out.”

“James never could deny me anything; but you know that feeling only too well, my darling.”

“But you have been imprisoned and surely will be hanged if the culprit is not found.”

John smirked, a horrid, twisted gash of a smile that cut through Sherlock’s poor heart.

“Not half as clever as you think you are, _ducky_ ,” he spat out, venomously.

Sherlock blinked, trying to regain a glimmer of his presence of mind.

“You have killed the Greek man, too. He will be found at your convenience and the fingerprints that I obligingly provided will serve as damning and definitive proof of his guilt.”

John started clapping his hands, slow and derisive.

“Bravo, my Lord. I certainly hoped you enjoyed the game. After all, you were gasping for a touch of adventure, weren’t you?”

“What happened to Peter Craven? Was he another victim of the hatred you harbour against my class?”

“Ah, but that would be telling. A man should be allowed to keep a few secrets, my love.”

Sherlock winced at the endearment. He never wanted to hear that word again for as long as he lived. He hoped that death would claim him soon, but first he had to know.

“Since I am to be your next victim, I would like to be granted one last wish.”

 John tilted his head to the side, pretending to consider Sherlock’s request.

“I have a proposition, your Lordship. I will grant your wish, if you do what I ask.”

“And what would that be?”

John turned fully towards him and his gaze was gimlet like, penetrating his victim’s scant defences with unerring precision.

“You won’t hear of it, but experience it instead.”

Sherlock shivered.  What would that experience entail if not death? How could he know if he was no longer sentient?

“I wouldn’t know, because I would be dead,” he stated, and his heart had finally turned to stone, as surely as if John had been Medusa and had ripped open his chest cavity to stare at his pulsating organ.

“I promise you that you will be alive to experience the full thrust of it.”

“Your word is devalued currency.”

“But the only currency your Lordship is allowed to spend. Aye, that’s what you’ve come to. The splendid Lord Trevor, with his celebrated beauty and noble lineage reduced to begging a common servant, a game-keeper! I will show you fear in a handful of dust, my darling.”

And to Sherlock’s horror, John’s mouth took his, and it tasted bitter and sweet, a Judas kiss. What was life anyway, if not a series of betrayals that increased in magnitude as the years rolled by? Better be done with it, one swift stab of the dagger and the end would come, merciful and pure.

“I accept your terms. Let’s do it now.”

John reached out towards the tray and selected an opium pipe which he handed to Sherlock.

“Your poison, my Lord,” he said, with solemnity, lighting a match and using it to light the pipe.

Sherlock didn’t hesitate: he started puffing on it, and the first drag, combined with the tainted gin still in his system, produced a startling sensation of floating away from his mortal shackles, freed from his dull flesh and its mortifications. The light of the candles dazzled him like the sunshine and he was happy; for a moment, he was blissfully content, oblivious of his past and uncaring of his destiny. His eyelids fluttered close and the night came, all enveloping and soft, like a silken cloak.

 

When he woke up, his head throbbing and his mouth parched, the darkness had another quality to it: it was musty an oppressive, containing, rather than liberating. He tried to shift, but he couldn’t. Gingerly, he extended his hand to touch the object that was holding him down, and his fingers found solid wood.

His brain came to life suddenly and painfully, like a torpid limb to which blood circulation is being restored, and he realised he had trouble breathing.

Frantically, his arms failed around and banged against his wooden prison.

He would have laughed, if he hadn’t been pervaded by the most intense terror that he’d even experienced in his brief existence.

Buried alive in a coffin, John had been eminently practical; no fancy touches or artistic flourishes, for him. Ever the pragmatist, he had devised a way to be rid of his victims that would mystify the police and allow him to get away with his crimes.

That’s how Craven had died, and now his curiosity had been satisfied; pity that he would not live to tell the tale.

“Help, help,” he shouted, using hands and feet to pound the tight confines of his cell.

He cried for help, until his mouth went hoarse and his body limp, until he had no strength left in his bones and no breath in his lungs.

The last thing he did was pray that God may save John’s soul.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have filched the buried alive plot device from the film The Vanishing.  
> In our case, it's from the American remake, as Sherlock will survive. In the original version, the victim dies.


	27. I Could A Tale Unfold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock learns the real truth
> 
> The chapter's title is from Hamlet:  
> “I could a tale unfold whose lightest word  
> Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,  
> Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,  
> Thy knotted and combined locks to part,  
> And each particular hair to stand on end  
> Like quills upon the fretful porpentine."
> 
> The Cross Bones site still exists. I have been there and it's a quaint jewel of a place.

“Your Lordship, wake up, please! Sherlock, come on, breathe, please, come on! Heavens above, Lestrade will have my hide! Wake up!” he shouted, slapping the waxen cheeks.

Frank Dimmock was an incongruous sight, with his face streaked with make-up and his short hair standing on end, as he tried to revive the pale, unconscious creature lying down on consecrated earth.

“John,” Sherlock exhaled, and his thin frame was wracked by a coughing fit that had him curled into foetal position. The sergeant had covered him up with a cape that wasn’t his and that he’d evidently filched from somewhere.

“Thank God,” Dimmock exclaimed, collapsing down next to Sherlock, at last resting his exhausted limbs.

“Where is John?” Sherlock croaked.

The sergeant stared at him uncomprehending, his heaving chest showing through the tears in the ruined, mud-caked frock.

“Watson is in Tevershall, as he should be. What is your name?” he asked, suspecting the other man to be suffering from shock.

“William Sherlock Scott Holmes and I’m not in shock.”

Dimmock was about to comment on both statements, but decided otherwise, preferring to concentrate on his breathing, which was still stertorous.

“We have to find him,” Sherlock said, trying to stand on his unsteady legs.

He looked around, striving to discern their location.

“We are inside the old Cross Bones,” Dimmock explained, wiping the sweat from his brow and leaving a streak of dirt in its wake.

“Craven was last seen in London Bridge,” Sherlock said, “Club 53 must have been held conveniently close to the cemetery. How very clever of him,” he concluded, with a measure of admiration among the gnawing pain and desperation.

He drew the cape tight around his shaking shoulders and finally looked at his saviour.

“How did you find me?”

“I was keeping an eye on you, what do you think? That devil of a girl wouldn’t let me be, but I sneaked away with the excuse of getting a bottle of champagne,” he explained. “I saw Acton take you through that rusty door and I bided my time. When I realised you weren’t coming out I did a quick reconnoitring of the premises and found the emergency exit at the back. I hid behind some bins and I saw you being carried by burly man to a motorcar parked nearby. It was an awful five minutes: I really thought you were done for. I impounded another motorcar and followed him. He was a damn sight faster than me and when I got here, he was already speeding away. That rogue must have arranged everything beforehand, but thankfully it was evident where the ground had been disturbed.”

“I seem to recall the Cross Bones is a disused burial ground.”

“How do you… never mind. You are right, my Lord, but unfortunately the powers that be have left it unsupervised.”

“The foolproof way to dispense of a body is one that marries opportunity and convenience,” Sherlock commented, before realising the full import of Dimmock’s words. “You said the man was burly, but John can hardly be described as that.”

Dimmock’s expression became increasingly puzzled.

“What’s Watson got to do with it? From what I saw, the man was dark-haired and tall; besides, Watson is not here in London, is he?”

“How stupid of me: the gin, of course!” Sherlock shouted, and an imperious tide of joy rushed through his veins, restoring life to his bruised heart. “We have to find him.”

“Yes, but how? He could be anywhere!”

“There’s only one place he could be.”

 

They drove through the West End at breakneck speed, and thankfully the streets they passed were nearly deserted, with only a handful of revellers cheering and bellowing in their direction.

They certainly were a quaint couple: Dimmock with his torn dress and muddy face and Sherlock with his mad curls interspersed with feathers and his eyes flashing out from beneath their blackened lids. The house in Bruton Street was not far from the gayety of Berkeley Square, and yet it was enveloped in silence and darkness, and the austere grandeur that pertained to that corner of Mayfair.

They stopped the car a few yards from it, and pondered their situation.

Dimmock felt gravely the indignity of his predicament, but his companion was blissfully indifferent.

“We can’t simply ring the bell and ask for an unspecified Greek man. Look at us both, Dimmock expostulated. “You may get away with it, because you are one of them, but as for me,” he continued.

“But what, dear fellow, they will call the police? But that’s precisely what we want them to do and what they will never do. Besides, I’m pretty certain no one would open the door, should we pull that knocker.”

“What then?”

“You’d better fetch Lestrade and bring him here.”

“And you?”

“I have just missed an appointment with death. I am pretty confident my hour is yet to come.”

“I can’t leave you alone with that beast. Even with Moriarty absent…”

“Moriarty is here, my boy.”

“But we checked the passenger list of the Mauretania and he was listed on it. His presence on board was confirmed by the Maritime authorities at both ends.”

“Yes, I’m sure it was. John was right! My clever John,” he enthused and Dimmock turned away, a little embarrassed. “He said that Moriarty would fight like a wild, cornered beast. And so he is, but we will fight back, by Jove, we will!”

“How will you get inside the house?” the sergeant enquired.

“I will find a way, don’t worry about me. Godspeed, and come back as quickly as possible.”

The sergeant hesitated a moment, but Sherlock had already jumped off the car and was hurrying towards Moriarty’s place. Dimmock restarted the purloined car and drove away in a puff of dust.

 

Sherlock had never forced his way inside a building, but he remembered that at their house in Kensington the servants frequently left the door ajar after they had enjoyed a quick smoke.

He gingerly descended the stone steps, and as he looked down at his feet, he realised for the first time how disarrayed he was: his gauzy tights were ripped and laddered and his pumps were stained, their feathers caked in mud. But he was alive and John was safe and well, waiting for Sherlock to return to him, victorious.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he was unsurprised to find the entrance to the pantry unlocked. Not only was he expecting it, he was certain that Moriarty would be inside the house, waiting. No matter that he had been buried alive and left for dead: Sherlock had this ancestral sensation - like the pricking of thumbs of Macbeth’s witch – of approaching evil, the same feeling he’d experienced in Haggerston.

He walked softly, allowing his eyes to get accustomed to the darkness. Past the pantry and the kitchen, he found the service staircase: he walked upstairs and didn’t stop until he saw a light coming from the end of the passage departing from the second floor landing. It was only a faint glow, but in the darkness it shined like a stage light.

The time had finally come.

Into battle, Dimmock had said earlier that night, and so it was coming to pass.

 

He turned the handle and the door opened slowly, without making a sound, into a luxuriously appointed salon; the surfeit of velvets and brocades, of enamels, gilt and pewter reminded Sherlock of Aladdin’s cave.

Initially, he thought the room to be empty, but when he made his way in, he saw a man standing by the window, facing outside: he wore a claret velvet dressing gown and black loose trousers and his black hair were gelled back and worn like a satin cap on his shapely head. Judging from his stillness, he could have been a well-coiffed statue.

When he finally spoke, his voice was languorous and his words unexpected, as if he’d been casually chatting to an acquaintance.

“Poor Yorgos, he did not realise the jig was up.”

“Your Greek servant,” Sherlock said, and he marvelled at his own daring.

To think that it was only a handful of months since he’d been at Fansworth, pontificating and philosophising with his husband! And now he was facing a criminal, wearing nothing but feathers and a silk cape. Fleetingly, he thought of John and of the genuine mirth they would have shared, had he been present.

“Not exactly a servant, my dear. I don't have to explain to you the nature of our… entanglement. After all, you kept one too. They are serviceable, aren’t they, always ready and, oh, so very grateful!” Moriarty said, in his musical voice.

“John is not… what you imagine he is. We are partners, equals.”

Moriarty laughed and turned towards Sherlock.

His countenance was unchanged: the same large mournful eyes, the same sad, pale face.

Somehow, in the course of the last few weeks, Sherlock had deconstructed the man’s appearance in his mind and put the pieces back together to form something quite different, more potent and fear-inducing. But James Moriarty was still the man Sherlock had made love to, the one who had written letters to him, seducing him with words.

“You really were easy, my dear. I don’t know what Watson finds in you. He is a simpleton, but there is iron, steel in him. While you…. look at you, _your Lordship_ ,” he said, and stared at him eloquently.

But Sherlock wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice, and this time he was sober. John loved him; it was true, as scientifically true as the earth going round the sun.

“You did not cause all this suffering out of jealousy, did you?” he sneered.

“What if I had?”

“A man has died, an innocent man.”

“There wasn’t anything particularly innocent in that man. He was a drunkard and a braggart with no other talent but spending money on trifles. But this is by the by, my dear Sherlock. Do not flatter yourself; I wasn’t _jealous_ ,” Moriarty said, smiling softly and edging closer to the younger man.

“You can’t kill me now; the police know I am here, in your house,” Sherlock said, wanting to understand and failing to. “Why would you let me get so close to the truth when all you had to do was stay away and watch me fail?”

Moriarty shook his head and for a moment his expression was transfigured into a mask of such hatred that Sherlock drew back in fear. It was gone in a heartbeat, but the horror of it was another of the shocks of Sherlock’s life: the knowledge that pure evil existed, that it wasn’t just a word in a book, but it did have a face and a body, and to him, its features would always be the same.

“I’m so immensely tired Sherlock, you cannot even imagine how exhausted a man can become with pretending. Being James Moriarty has been enormous fun, but also the source of incalculable tedium. You society people are like pretty baubles: one delights in playing with you and maybe even breaking you, time and again, but there soon comes a time when one wishes, yearns, for something more… stimulating.”

“Richard Brook,” Sherlock whispered, but the other man sneered.

“Another fiction, my dear; don’t delude yourself you’ve discovered the truth of me, because there isn’t a suitable spade in the entire world capable of digging that deep.”    

Moriarty moved to a glass-fronted cabinet and extracted a bottle of yellow Chartreuse. He poured two fingers of liquor in a crystal flute and gazed at his guest who shook his head.

“It’s perfectly safe. No hallucinogenic in it,” he smirked, but Sherlock wanted to keep a clear head, prevent it from swimming more than it already did.

“Peter Craven?” he asked.

“Sit down,” Moriarty said, urbanely. They both sat, one in his elegant bedroom attire and the other in ripped and soiled fancy dress, the surreal portrait of a feigned civilised conversation.

As Moriarty recounted his story, Sherlock caught a glimpse of the old fascination, but this time he could observe it with detachment and realise how close it was to what had attracted him to Victor: there was the outcast’s ferocity and the narrator’s sagacity, there was, too, the humour of the detached spectator and the élan of the social climber wanting to succeed.

In many ways, he and Moriarty were of a kind, but where the Irishman was cruel and disdainful, Sherlock was fundamentally good and compassionate.

The story of Peter Craven was tightly linked to Thomas Garnett’s and the society of bright young people that congregated at Club 43 under the aegis of Ma Meyrick. It was a sordid tale of wantonness and obsession that had unfolded against a backdrop of dissipation and drug-induced hallucinations.

Moriarty had spun his web and Garnett had fallen inside it, helpless in his naïve youth. Turned into a sort of sex slave, he had been fed on tainted gin and opium and his vision had become so distorted anything was a threat to his imaginary happiness. When Shaw had killed himself, distraught by his beloved’s desertion, Garnett had given in fully to his obsession and Craven had become the target of his jealousy and hatred.

Naturally, there had been nothing between Craven and Moriarty aside from a business-like relationship – money was passing hands as the young cadet was a hopeless gambler – but Garnett had been pushed to believe otherwise. That fated night in London Bridge, when Club 53 had re-enacted a frenetic scene worthy of Sodom and Gomorrah, the tragedy had finally struck and the young model had strangled his alleged rival. It had been an unexpected stroke of luck, as there had been no witnesses to that murder, the men having been locked inside the private cubicle where Garnett was taking his drugs. Moriarty and his faithful Yorgos had seized the opportunity of killing two birds with one stone and buried both young men in the Cross Bones.

“Why did you do it?” Sherlock asked, feeling more than a little queasy.

“I see myself as a saviour, a benefactor,” the man explained, enunciating the words with extreme care. “Where Ma Meyrick and I come from, life is unspeakably dire. Hardship of the sort you will never see the like, my darling. I ran away from it, as fast and as far as I could. I have made a success of my life, but there is nothing here that compares to the intensity of the horror of pain and deprivation that I have endured. You rich Englishmen are all so _bloodless_ ,” he spat out, in utter disgust.

“I thought you cared above all about success,” Sherlock said.

“I told you already: you cannot ever hope to understand me!”

“Oh, but I think I do, now.”

Moriarty looked at him, pondering.

“Perhaps you do, a little. And you have proved to be not as uninteresting and dull as I thought. Even though your brand of intimacy was extremely distasteful,” he grimaced, and Sherlock shuddered. His insecurity made a brief appearance, before he was reminded of John’s words, his eyes, his hands and the purity of his heart.

And this demon, as treacherous and far-sighted as a sibyl, saw right into his mind.

“You have made John into a mirror of your sickening desires and one day, not too far from now, he will learn to despise you.”

“You said I do not understand you, but the opposite is truer.”

Moriarty sighed and downed the content of his crystal glass.

“This conversation is becoming dull, dull, dull!” he shrieked. Such swift changes of mood and atmosphere were unsettling and Sherlock acknowledged the stark reality of his own fragility in the face of the utter lack of humanity in the other man. Each and every one of us possesses a core, a bundle of traits that are inscribed in our cells and make us who we are; Sherlock saw that Moriarty’s core was a perpetual, relentless void, that was filled with pretences and lies, with feigned emotions and exaggerated ambitions, but ultimately was just a repetition of itself, spectating at a show of perennial destruction.

There was nothing left to say, except a declaration of war.

“John and I will find you, wherever you will choose to hide. We will make it our mission to destroy you.”

The mournful black eyes lit up in manic delight and the man uttered a childish, amused chuckle.

“Isn’t it a magnificent prospect? So much fun to look forward to!” he exclaimed, but immediately sobered, lowering his voice to a velvety pitch. “Glad you realise you have lost this battle.”

“Not completely. John will be freed.”

“But at what price? You will have to let me go.”

“A price I am willing to pay.”

“In love and war,” Moriarty quipped, raising his empty glass in a mock-toast and throwing it against the fireplace, where it shattered noisily.

“An ancient Greek custom,” he said, and stood up, tightened the sash of his dressing gown, dusting himself off like he’d just been rolling in dirt.

“Goodbye, Sherlock Holmes. And once again I’ll warn you: take care you don’t get too close to the fire.”

Sherlock lips curved into a lopsided smile, as he replied:

“My skin is not too soft, dear fellow; it has withstood the fire of hell and it will again.”

He had not yet finished his short speech when he realised his enemy was gone, quite dissolved into thin air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for staying with me and leaving kudos/comments. They are very much appreciated.
> 
> Not long now till our boys are reunited and happy again! Yay!


	28. Nostalgie de La Boue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock goes back to Fansworth Hall
> 
> The chapter's title is explained in the course of the narrative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, the real Harold Acton was a perfectly honest man (as far as we know).

When Lestrade had arrived on the scene with Dimmock, he’d been let in by an ancient-looking butler who’d been flabbergasted at the sergeant’s appearance.

Sherlock had been frantically searching the vast mansion, and had found a multitude of passages and secret trapdoors, a few of which were in the salon where his confrontation with Moriarty had taken place.

A part of him was fascinated by the man’s ingenuity and his painstaking attention to detail which seemed to coexist with random cruelty and a craving for attention and applause.

His bitch-goddess wasn’t literary success or even money, but power. The drugs he had peddled to that sorry crowd of epicene epicureans had been his way to infiltrate a society he could never hope to conquer otherwise.

The plays he had allegedly written were his cover and Sherlock remembered Acton confessing to being “a mere ink-slinger” and it wasn’t hard to guess the nature of the relationship between the two men. Harold Acton, for all his distinguished connections and impeccable lineage, was not rich and drugs cost money that he probably didn’t have.

Sherlock was sure they would not induce Acton or any of his friends into confessing, as they needed the drugs and Ma Meyrick was still there to provide them. As for the woman, she would be arrested sooner or later, and a similar fate would await her accomplices, but by that time Moriarty would be millions of miles away from that world, already immersed in his newfangled reality.

 

They finally found him in the attic.

The body of the man whose name had been Yorgos was still warm and his wide-open eyes bore the signs of drug overdose.

In the inner pocket of his tuxedo they found a signed confession, purporting his relationship with Anderson to be a business transaction gone awry. 

Sherlock demanded that Lestrade took the man’s fingerprints and compared them to the one on the bottle, certain they would be a perfect match.

“I was stupid to believe that bottle to have been handled by Moriarty. What happened was far simpler: he swapped the original flagon with this one he’d brought with him to Fansworth. He always suspected how the story was bound to end, but he wanted us to suffer and doubt one another. There was always the chance I would leave John to his fate or suffocate inside that coffin. Like a journey through the wilderness, he allowed chance to play its role, even as the destination had been mapped out beforehand.”

“But he did not think twice about sacrificing his own companion,” Lestrade observed, sadly, as he looked down at the bluish face of the dead man.

The coroner was called and an inquest opened, but the confession proved authentic, according to the many samples of the man’s writing that were found in his room. As Sherlock had predicted, the fingerprints on the laudanum bottle corresponded to those of the servant. Scotland Yard took charge of the investigation of the Tevershall murder and it was swiftly ruled that Watson was innocent and his criminal record was to be wiped as clean as the driven snow.

It could have been a perfectly satisfactory ending if it weren’t for the victims that had been sacrificed on the way to this conclusion.

Yorgos was Sherlock’s sting in the tail, as from the journal he’d kept –mostly burnt, although some pages had been salvaged for handwriting comparison purposes – he could tell the man was educated and that he had been in thrall of his desperate need to please his lover.

Sherlock felt a kinship with Yorgos that distressed him more than he could say and that stayed with him, in some measure, for the rest of his days. It was to become part of his motivation to bring Moriarty to justice, even though he knew the administration of the law would never be fair enough punishment for the rogue’s perverse misdeeds.

The Cross Bones ground yielded the bodies of Garnett and Craven, side by side in a macabre death-embrace.

Dimmock was givem the unpalatable task of informing Lady Eloise, and he asked Sherlock to accompany him.

The latter was pleased to witness the sergeant’s extreme delicacy of manner and his assured touch, which seemed to have exponentially matured since their Haggerston adventure.

“He will make an excellent Inspector, one day,” Sherlock told Lestrade.

They were dining at L’Escargot in Percy Street, and Mycroft had joined them despite firmly disagreeing with the choice of restaurant. Bohemian, he’d pronounced it with a pained grimace, and his partner had laughed pleasantly and ignored his snobbishness, which he knew by experience to be either a defensive barrier or an affectation.

There were depictions of Parisian landscapes on the walls, nothing like the disturbing Matisse works Sherlock had admired at the Gargoyle.

It was tranquil and banal, exactly what he needed after the unhealthy divertissements provided by the Mayfair set.

“Yes, although I don’t think he will never quite forget the sight of you in that costume,” the Inspector replied, grinning in Mycroft’s direction.

It was one of the elder Holmes deepest regrets that he never got to see his brother in the swan costume and express all his horrified disapproval. He so delighted in contradicting Sherlock that any wasted opportunity was a cause of intense displeasure.

“You let him go,” he said, eyeing his lemon sole with suspicion.

“I had no choice. I have to confess that to this day I still do not know what plans he had concocted had I tried to stop him, but I am sure he would have either killed John or someone else whose life I hold dear,” the younger Holmes replied, looking pointedly at his brother, who blushed a little and coughed.

“You did the most sensible thing, Sherlock. A cornered animal will fight to the death, uncaring of the consequences,” Lestrade said, happily chewing on his pepper steak.

“It’s what John said. We will come back to London and root out Moriarty; I’m absolutely confident of our eventual success.”

“Hear, hear,” the Inspector cheered, raising his wine glass.

“What will you do with Sir Victor then, little brother? May I remind you that you are still married to him?”

Sherlock’s face darkened.

“I have written to him to inform him that I will return to Fansworth to discuss the dissolution of our marital contract. I will leave tomorrow and I trust the matter will be resolved speedily.”

“I certainly hope you are right,” Mycroft said, looking very sceptical despite his words.

“I have a precious ally in Mrs Donovan,” the younger Holmes affirmed, winking in Lestrade’s direction.

“All’s well that ends well,” Lestrade declared, and the two men broke into laughter at Mycroft’s astonished expression. That his partner would quote Shakespeare! What was his world coming to?

 

At Fansworth, Sir Victor’s life had proceeded in ways that weren’t entirely unexpected as Sherlock had received reports of his husband’s progress from Mrs Donovan. The baronet’s legs were still paralysed, but his manly vigour had been restored and the lady had made veiled insinuations to the changed state of their relations.

Despite all this, or perversely because of it, Victor had been shocked by the contents of Sherlock’s missive.

Victor had not been surprised _inwardly_. Inwardly, he had known for a long time Sherlock was leaving him. But he had absolutely refused any outward admission of it. Therefore, outwardly, it came as the most terrible blow to him.

And that is how we are. By strength of will, we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.

Victor was like a hysterical child. He gave Mrs Donovan a terrible shock, sitting up in bed, ghastly and blank.

“Why, Sir Victor, whatever's the matter?”

No answer! She was terrified lest he had had a stroke. She hurried and felt his face, took his pulse.

“Is there a pain? Do try and tell me where it hurts you. Do tell me! Then I'll telephone to Sheffield for Dr Carrington!”

She was moving to the door, when he said in a hollow tone:

“No!”

“Do you mean you'd rather I didn't fetch the doctor?”

A pause: then the hollow voice said:

“I'm not ill. Sherlock is leaving me.” It was as if a statue spoke.

Mrs Donovan moved a little nearer to the bed. “Oh, don't you believe it. You can trust his Lordship to do the right thing.”

The image in the bed did not change, but it pushed a letter over the counterpane.

“Read it!” said the sepulchral voice.

“It is private, it doesn’t seem right. You can tell me what he says, if you wish.”

“Read it!” repeated the voice.

“Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Victor,” she said. And she read the letter.

The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs Donovan looked at it and was worried.

The only thing was to release his self-pity. Like the lady in Tennyson, he must weep or he must die.

So Mrs Donovan began to weep first. She covered her face with her hand and burst into little wild sobs. “I would never have believed it of his Lordship, I wouldn't!” she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old grief and sense of woe, and weeping the tears of her own bitter chagrin. Once she started, her weeping was genuine enough, for she had had something to weep for.

Victor thought of the way he had been abandoned by Sherlock, and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs Donovan, as soon as she saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and leaned towards him.

And she drew him to her, and held her arms round his great shoulders, while he laid his face on her bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge shoulders. At length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her heart she said to herself: “Oh, Sir Victor! Oh, high and mighty Trevors! Is this what you've come down to!” And finally he even went to sleep, like a child.

After this, Victor became like a child with Mrs Donovan. He would hold her hand, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said! “Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!” And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same! “Do kiss me!” and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery.

And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of madonna-worship. And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exultation, the exultation of perversity, of being a man again, but not with his husband who had abandoned him.

Mrs Donovan was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved and hated it. And they drew into a closer physical intimacy, an intimacy of perversity, which was dearer to Victor than any of the philosophical conversations he had entertained with his husband.

The curious thing was that he was much sharper and keener than the real man he used to be. He was now a _real_ business-man; when it was a question of affairs, he was an absolute he-man, sharp as a needle, and impervious as a bit of steel. When he was out among men, seeking his own ends, and 'making good' his colliery workings, he had an almost uncanny shrewdness, hardness, and a straight sharp punch. The wallowing in private emotion, the utter abasement of his manly self, seemed to lend him a second nature, cold, almost visionary, business-clever. In business he was quite inhuman.

 

Victor was away when Sherlock arrived. Mrs Donovan received him.

“Oh, your Lordship, it isn't the happy home-coming we hoped for, is it!” she said.

“Isn't it?' said Sherlock, smiling wickedly.

He entered the house, which now he hated with every fibre in his body. The great, rambling mass of a place seemed evil to him, just a menace over him. He was no longer its master, but a stranger.

He did not meet Victor till he went down to dinner. He was dressed, and with a black tie: rather reserved, and very much the superior gentleman. He behaved perfectly politely during the meal and kept a polite sort of conversation going: but it seemed all touched with insanity.

There was tension till after coffee, when Mrs Donovan said she would go up to her room.

Victor and Sherlock sat in silence when she had gone. Neither would begin to speak. “I suppose you don't at all mind having gone back on your word?” Victor said at last.

“I can't help it.”

“And for _what_ do you want to go back on everything?” he insisted.

“Love!” Sherlock said.

“You didn't think that worth having, when you met me. Do you mean to say love is more important than intimacy?”

“Intimacy doesn’t exist without real love.”

“Whims! I merely don't believe in this love of yours.”

“But why _should_ you believe in it? You have only to divorce me, not to believe in my feelings.”

“And why should I divorce you?”

“Because I don't want to live here any more. And you really don't want me.”

“Pardon me! I don't change. For my part, since you are my husband, I should prefer that you should stay under my roof in dignity and quiet. Leaving aside personal feelings, it is bitter as death to me to have this order of life broken up, here in Fansworth, and the decent round of daily life smashed, just for some whim of yours.”

“But don't you see,” screamed Sherlock. “I _must_ go away from you, and I must live with the man I love.”

“No, I don't see it! I don't care for your love nor for the man you love. I don't believe in that sort of cant.”

“But you see, I do. I only wanted to spare your feelings.”

“To spare my feelings?”

“Yes! Because who I really love is John Watson, who was our game-keeper here.”

Victor went pale with shock, and he lay back in his chair, gasping and looking up at the ceiling.

At length he sat up.

“And when did you begin with him?”

“In the spring.”

He leaned forward in his chair, gazing at his husband with disgust.

“My God, you ought to be wiped off the face of the earth! That scum! That bumptious lout! That miserable cad! And carrying on with him all the time, while you were here and he was one of my servants! My God, my God, is there any end to your beastly lowness!”

He was beside himself with rage, as Sherlock knew he would be. He looked at him weirdly, without an answer. It was obvious, he couldn't even accept the fact of the existence of Watson, in any connexion with his own life.

“And do you mean to say you'd marry him and bear his foul name?” he asked at length.

“Yes, that's what I want.”

Victor was again as if dumbfounded.

“Yes!” he said at last. “That proves that what I've always thought about you is correct: you're not normal, you're not in your right senses. You're one of those half-insane, perverted men who must run after depravity, the _nostalgie de la boue_.”

Suddenly he had become almost wistfully moral, seeing himself the incarnation of good, and people like Watson and Sherlock the incarnation of mud, of evil.

“So don't you think you'd better divorce me and have done with it?” Sherlock said.

“Divorcing you is not enough. I will demand an annulment, and it will be like we were never married. I will see to it immediately. I’ll ask Mrs Donovan to prepare my bags. We shall leave tomorrow. I don’t want you here when I return.”

He exited in a flurry of cold hatred, leaving Sherlock on his own, free at last to pledge his life to the man he loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks a million for staying with me guys!!!  
> Next: John and Sherlock are back together and there will be s.e.x.


	29. The Milk Path to a Hungry Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John reunite, at last
> 
> The chapter's title is from the poem "Your night is of lilac" by Mahmoud Darwish
> 
> The excerpt from Sherlock's letter to John is in fact a conflation of the declarations of love between poet Siegfried Sassoon and socialite Stephen Tennant (brother of David). Sassoon was obsessed with his gay lover and evidently did not fear the law (at the time homosexuality was still a crime). Good on him.

_When you put your mouth over mine, crushing it - some kisses seem to draw the very soul out of one’s body – and yours do mine. I feel all my heart swooning at the touch of your mouth - my soul dies a hundred million deaths when your mouth is on my face, on my neck, on my body. You leave me insensate with happiness and intoxicate all my senses._

_Sherlock Holmes_

 

Sherlock awoke with the furious sound of pelting rain battering the window panes, or so it seemed to his torpid, somnolent senses.

When he finally opened his eyes, he was assaulted by the sunshine that rushed in from the open window.

The noise wasn’t coming from that direction, but rather from the door. He slipped into his dressing gown and padded towards the source of the commotion.

“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” he remonstrated, but all his irritation dissipated when he opened the door to find John standing in front of him.

There was only time to notice that the blond man had paled and thinned, before Sherlock lost every notion of time and space, as John took him in his arms and kissed the soul out of him.

“Lord, how I’ve missed you!” the older man whispered, smothering his lover with hot, possessive caresses.

“You are here,” Sherlock marvelled, trying to reaffirm his grasp on reality.

“I received your letter,” John replied, hungrily mouthing his lover’s graceful neck.

“Oh,” was the dazed reply. Sherlock tilted his head to the side, baring even more of his throat.

“You really meant all of it? For I feel precisely the same: you make me crazy with desire. I was dying without you, my love.”

John pulled Sherlock towards the mirror and arranged him so that he was looking at his own reflection. Slowly, he peeled the dressing gown off the lithe body and let it fall to the floor. He could see the pulse dancing beneath the translucent skin of the swan-like throat.

“You are indescribably beautiful,” John observed, almost sadly. He discarded his own clothes, his eyes never leaving Sherlock’s in the mirror.

He traced the length of the younger man’s spine with his fingertips, his soft yet proprietary touch lingering along the elegant loins and insisting on the abundant swell of the buttocks.

“I can’t decide where to begin,” John said, shaking his head and smiling.

“Just hold me,” Sherlock begged, his voice breaking.

“I’m a complete fool,” John growled, and he grasped his lover from behind, one possessive hand curled around the base of Sherlock’s throat and the other cupping his leaking arousal.

“John, John,” moaned Sherlock, bracing his hands against the mirror, pushing back into his lover’s greedy embrace. 

There were bites, pinches and suckles, in a frenzy of mutual worship and possession that had them writhe and thrust, until it was too much, and still not enough.

John went down on his knees and eyed the magnificence of his lover’s arse with famished intent: he sank his face in between the lovely buttocks, delighting in its strong musk and salty taste. His tongue lapped at the fevered skin, leaving it drenched and quivering. Beneath him, Sherlock was trembling and whimpering, his legs unsteady like a foal’s. Delicately, John pulled his lover towards him and cradling his precious head on the crook of his arm, he helped him lie down, supine, on the rug.

“I have to take you in my mouth, darling, I simply have to,” he said, raggedly, as he crawled towards his prize.

“I want, I want… too,” Sherlock stuttered. The fire was roaring in his bowels, his heart, inside his veins. His vision had filled with sparkling lights and his mouth watered with the desire to possess and being taken in return.

This soixante-neuf was different from the one they had enjoyed before: this time, John allowed his lover to use his hands, and Sherlock was in heaven. The entirety of his being was overcome with the dual bliss of pleasuring John and being devoured by him. They found a sensual rhythm, a give and take of mouths and hands that quickly brought them to ecstasy and the sucking, licking, slapping, slurping noises proved as exhilarating as touch and scent.

Sherlock came first, deep inside John’s throat and he shouted as he felt all of his semen being swallowed, and the hungry mouth wanting it, demanding more, all of it, all of him.

When John’s turn came, Sherlock knew what he wanted, more than anything: when he felt the phallus twitch and harden, he gave it one more loving suck before pulling out and allowing it to erupt all over his face, his swollen lips, his aching throat. Some of it, oh bliss, landed on his tongue and he lapped it up voraciously, as he did with the rest after he’d scooped it up with his fingers. Like a ravenous animal, he went after it blindly, as John kept repeating his name like the most beautiful and heartfelt of prayers.

 

“I had never received such a letter before. I had a lot of trouble suppressing my arousal,” John murmured against Sherlock’s lips. They lay in bed, along their sides, chest to chest, in a tight, amorous embrace.

“Oh, again, please,” the younger man whimpered, as his lover caressed and yanked his curls. “I wanted to reassure you that my feelings and desires were unchanged. They always will be.”

“I love you too, my darling. Even if my words can never be as eloquent and poetic, I hope you know how wildly you are adored,” John murmured, capturing his lover’s mouth in a deep, sensual kiss.

“Victor is demanding an annulment. I will be free to marry you, if you’ll have me,” Sherlock said, soft and a little shy.

“Oh, I will have you,” John said, lewdly, stealing another kiss.

“Mary is doing well at the hospital. Mrs Donovan’s help has been invaluable, and yours too, of course. She’s immensely grateful to you, for all you have done for her. All of it,” he said, pointedly.

“You haven’t told her about me… about us,” Sherlock said, averting his face and closing his eyes.

“Hey, look at me,” John demanded, and when his lover complied, he continued: “What sort of man do you think I am? I couldn’t hide it from her, after what you did on her behalf. And I wouldn’t have wanted to. You are the love of my life and I would like the whole world to know.”

The younger man’s face lit up.

“Will she divorce you?”

“Nay, better than that: she will ask for our marriage to be annulled as it was never consummated.”

“You will be free too…” Sherlock started, but couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. He felt he was forcing himself on John, who perhaps wasn’t as eager for his life to be forever conjoined to that of an inexperienced youth.

“I can’t wait for the day when you will be mine, by the law of God and men,” John replied.

Sherlock stilled, his mouth agape, and John imagined he had misunderstood his intentions.

“We don’t have to do anything rash. After all, you haven’t had the time to properly consider…”

“I wasn’t sure you really wanted to… with me,”

They spoke in unison, laughing at the silly muddle they had created out of nothing.

“What is your full given name?” John asked and Sherlock told him.

The older man shifted and turned until his torso was upright and his knees planted on the mattress. Sherlock sat up with his back against the headboard.

There was a moment of utter quiet, an almost sacred calm, before John cleared his throat and took his lover’s hand in his.

“William Sherlock Scott Holmes, will you do me the immense honour of becoming my husband?” he asked, in the firmest tone he could conjure up in his highly emotional state.

His future spouse murmured a strangled “Yes,” and his mouth trembled and contorted as tears trickled down his cheeks.

“Don’t cry, my love,” John pleaded, his sipping kisses collecting all the precious evidence of his fiancé’s fervour.

“I know what these are for: you are upset that I will no longer call you _my Lord_ ” he joked, and Sherlock laughed through the tears. “Don’t fret, my darling, I will call you all the names you like.”

“A man named Acton called me fey,” Sherlock said and his lover’s face visibly darkened.

“You haven’t told me everything in your letter, have you?”

“There is more, some of it fairly unpleasant.”

“So I gathered, from what the lawyer said. But will you tell me?” John asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

“Yes, but not just now. Let’s say that I caught a glimpse of a topsy-turvy world of mindless fun and games.”

“And you wondered what it would be like to be part of it,” John concluded, feeling suddenly cold. “They must have been flocking to you like thirsty beasts to a fresh pool of water.”

Sherlock tightened his arms around his lover’s muscular back.

“Yes, but don’t you see, that made it even worse! That effervescence, that superficial joy only caused my yearning for you to deepen, to the point of genuine pain.”

“Oh, my dear boy,” John moaned, as he kissed down Sherlock’s neck and chest, until he found a nipple and latched on it.

“I wanted… I do want, always, always,” the younger man babbled, arching his back to offer more of his body to John’s attentions. He received them in spades, as John went to work on his chest, tweaking and biting the sensitive nubs until Sherlock was fully aroused again and in dire need of being taken. He was about to ask for it, even though the words failed him, when John seemed to be invaded by a sort of menacing calm and a commanding authority that frightened the younger man, and excited him to distraction.

"Where?" John bit out, and it was almost a bark.

“Inside the drawer,” he replied, and John reached towards the bedside cabinet and found the bottle of oil.

“On your hands and knees,” he commanded, and Sherlock obeyed, resting his weight on his forearms and spreading his legs as wide as he could.

The preparation was ruthless and thorough, done with mouth and fingers, and leaving the younger man incapable of forming coherent thoughts. A stream of mewling noises turned into high-pitched keening as John suckled his taut sac, while three of his deft fingers were slowly penetrating his loosened entrance.

“Please, please,” were the only words he could utter, and his prayers were obeyed in the form of a wet and hard shaft breaching him and sinking down into him, to the hilt.

There was no teasing this time, and rightly so, as Sherlock needed to be fucked in earnest. It was a deep, heartfelt, brutal fuck that he wanted and John gave it to him.

His strong fingers dug into his lover’s hips, as he slammed repeatedly into the trembling, writhing body beneath him.

“Mine, mine,” he grunted, as his thickened cock disappeared inside the yearning, tightening passage.

“Yes, yes,” came the reply, in between whimpers and sobs.

The climax was animalistic and sublime: John relentlessly pumping his lover’s cock, as he thrust into him with manic vigour and Sherlock screaming, as he sprayed the sheets with his copious release; when John came, a heartbeat later, his entire being seemed to empty itself into his lover, as if he had been a vessel that needed to be filled.

There was no creature on earth or underneath it that could keep him away from Sherlock, and he dared them, challenged them to try.

 

“I hope I didn’t hurt you, my darling,” John asked. He was wiping Sherlock with a beautifully embroidered cloth, and feeling a little guilty for his previous exuberance and the spoiling of such exquisite fabric.

The younger man stretched his lovely, slightly bruised body, like a well-fed kitten, and sighed.

“Yes, it aches a little, yes,” he replied, with a luminous smile that transfigured his quasi-hieratic countenance.

And to John, he was almost like a sainted image that he was desecrating; he dimly realised the extent of his perversion, while Sherlock was aware of it, and it heightened his pleasure in ways he had only started to savour.

The more he played coy and virginal, he suspected, the more intense and complex John’s arousal would be and, consequently, their carnal encounters.

There was something inherently noble in John’s nature and it sought purity and candour, wanting to protect it and cherish it, like a soldier fighting for his motherland.

And Sherlock wanted to plunge head first into danger, knowing that his lover, his husband, was by his side, defending his honour and his life.

 

Outside the door, Betts had deposited a tray with coffee, eggs and toast, as she usually did when Sherlock requested to not be disturbed.

As they partook of their breakfast, John asked his fiancé to recount the facts that had lead to the discovery of the Greek man’s body. Part of the story had been related by letter, but some of the details Sherlock had decided would be better told in person.

When he came to the Haggerston Baths party, the tainted gin and his burial in the Cross Bones, John blanched and his hands tightened into menacing fists.

“You could have died there, and you would have thought I was the devil who’d put you in that coffin! James Moriarty better wish I never set eyes on him again!” he exclaimed, touching his lover’s body to make sure he was alive and well.

“To tell you the truth, John, I was hoping that would be our next assignment, after we move to London.”

John’s eyes widened, but he did not say anything, waiting for Sherlock to explain.

“When we told Lady Eloise about Moriarty – well, it was your future husband who told her not sergeant Dimmock, since by law he wasn’t permitted to – she was excessively distressed at Moriarty having escaped unpunished. To cut a long story short, she requested to enlist our services for the foreseeable future.”

“Our services, what services are you talking about?”

“I was thinking of calling myself a _consulting detective_ : it has a nice ring to it, original but not too quaint, business-like but not overly stuffy,” Sherlock explained, nibbling the corner of a toast slice.

John shook his head, amused and a little overwhelmed.

“You could be my assistant. I am sure your medical and anatomical knowledge will prove useful, Doctor Watson,” the detective went on, lowering his voice, and leaning closer to his assistant.

“I’m not a doctor, you delightful madman,” John replied, kissing the proffered cheek.

“But I will help you, if that’s what you need me to do. Moriarty has to be destroyed: I would have agreed to that, even without pay.”

“You said you wouldn’t want to be without an occupation, so I procured us one,” Sherlock stated, proudly.

“My clever boy,” John marvelled, brushing a few wayward curls from Sherlock’s brow.

They stared into each other’s eyes for a long minute, savouring the contentment of being together and not having to separate. They would never have to leave each other’s side again, not for the rest of their lives. It was a heady prospect, more potent than any drug Sherlock had ever tasted.

“That painter fellow you mentioned. I would love it if he painted your portrait,” John said, suddenly.

“Wouldn’t a photograph do?” Sherlock joked. “Duncan Forbes? Yes, I suppose he could. And what about you, would you be in it too?”

“He could do us in a group, Vulcan and Apollo under the net of art. I used to be a blacksmith, before I was a game-keeper,” the older man replied, with the customary wicked glint in his eye.

At that, his fiancé’s pupils dilated and his lips parted, and there was no other choice for John but to kiss that mouth and intoxicate all his senses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the end!!!
> 
> Thanks for staying with me and leaving your kudos/comments. It has been a long and exciting journey.


	30. The Game is Afoot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end!
> 
> Note: David Tennant and his wife really held a Mozart party and were dressed pretty much like I described. Stephen Tennant's nickname was indeed Steenie.
> 
> Sir Malcolm's speech to John is more or less entirely taken from the original book, mainly to show how lewd Lawrence could be (bless him).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we have finally reached the end of this journey!  
> Thanks to all of you for taking your time to read, comment and leave kudos. Without you, I wouldn't have bothered to continue.  
> Obviously, this is a first draft and eventually I will re-revise and polish it, etc, but I wanted to grab the story before it disappeared (as stories tend to do).  
> Thanks again, you have been fantastic!

The meeting between John and Sherlock’s father took place a few days later in a private room at his club in Belgravia, the two men alone, looking one another up and down.

Sir Malcolm drank a fair amount of whisky, John also drank. And they talked all the while about India, on which the young man was well informed.

This lasted during the meal. Only when coffee was served, and the waiter had gone, Sir Malcolm lit a cigar and said, heartily:

“Well, young man, and what about Sherlock?”

A grin flickered on John’s face.

“Well, Sir, and what about him?”

“You have asked him to marry you and he has accepted.”

“I have that honour!”

“Honour, by God!” Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh. “Honour! How was the going, eh? Good, my boy, what?”

“Very.”

“I'll bet it was! Ha-ha! My son, chip of the old block, what! I never went back on a good bit of fucking, myself.” He rolled his eyes to heaven. “You warmed him up, oh, you warmed him up, I can see that. Ha-ha! You set fire to his haystack all right. Ha-ha-ha! I was jolly glad of it, I can tell you. He needed it. A game-keeper, eh, my boy! Bloody good poacher, if you ask me. Ha-ha! But now, look here, speaking seriously, what are we going to do about it? Speaking seriously, you know!'

Speaking seriously, they didn't get very far. John, though a little tipsy, was much the soberer of the two. He kept the conversation as intelligent as possible: which wasn't saying much.

“So you're a game-keeper! Oh, you're quite right! That sort of game is worth a man's while, eh, what? I envy you, my boy. How old are you?”

“Thirty-six.”

The knight lifted his eyebrows.

“As much as that! Well, you've another good twenty years, by the look of you. Oh, game-keeper or not, you're a good cock. I can see that with one eye shut. Not like that blasted Victor! A lily-livered hound with never a fuck in him, never had. I like you, my boy, I'll bet you've a good cod on you, I can see that. You're a fighter. Game-keeper! Ha-ha, by crikey, I wouldn't trust my game to you! But look here, my boy, if ever I can do anything for you, you can rely on me. Game-keeper! Christ, but it's rich! I like it! Oh, I like it! Shows the boy’s got spunk. What? You're a real man, I can see that.”

“I'm glad you think so. They usually tell me, in a sideways fashion, that I'm a beast.”

“Oh, they would! My dear fellow, what could you be but a beast, to all those stuffed shirts?”

They parted most genially, and John laughed inwardly all the time for the rest of the day.

 

The wedding took place in Christ Church, a picturesque abbey in Kensington on a sunny day in September and the reception – a jovial, intimate affair – was held at Sir Malcolm’s home in Derry Street.

Sherlock mostly sat in a daze of happiness, merely nodding and smiling when friends and family came over to congratulate him.

He stared at his beringed hand with a bewildered expression, like he was afraid the narrow band of platinum might disappear when he wasn’t looking at it.

The joy and pride he felt were so intense and overwhelming that his body was exhausted by the surfeit of emotions: thus, he languidly lounged about, letting himself be kissed, hugged and patted on the head, very much in the manner of a benevolent pet dog.

Such unusual behaviour had worried his husband at first, but when he’d been reassured that Sherlock was merely in a “state of heightened bliss,” John had happily partaken of the refreshments and conversation, finding both to his liking.

Aside from Mycroft and Lestrade, whose company he’d learnt to appreciate, the gathering comprised many of Violet’s friends and acolytes, and John was extremely glad to exchange views with fellow humanists and socialists; for the first time in his life, outside of his regiment, he felt understood and appreciated for who he was, and not for his class, for what he thought and not for his role in society.

He regretted Sherlock’s mother was no longer of this world, as he was certain he would have loved her almost as much as he loved his husband.

 

“Is this your mother? She looks like you, but with Mycroft’s lips,” John asked, gazing at the portrait which took pride of place in Sherlock’s old bedroom.

It was by Augustus John and its vivid colours and bold brushwork succeeded in depicting the quickness of her gaze and the innate grace and elegance of her demeanour: an intelligent, emotional and fierce creature. It didn’t surprise John that Sir Malcolm had never remarried.

“Yes, she was a special woman,” Sherlock whispered, “She always tried to envisage a better world, one with less suffering and more equality. And yet, sometimes, she did not see us clearly, Mycroft and I. She was looking into the future, but imagined us still too wrapped up in our closed up world. She was wrong; strangely, even in Mycroft’s case, apparently.”

John laughed and took his husband’s hand, giving it a comforting squeeze.

“Surely, that would have been a pleasant surprise for her.”

“Oh yes, she would have introduced you and Lestrade to all her friends and smuggled you in to all her meetings,” Sherlock replied, kissing the back of John’s hand.

“My mission in life is to make you the happiest man in the world,” the older man declared, looking into his husband’s changeling eyes.

“You will have to conjure up another occupation, since I doubt I could ever be happier than I am now, here with you.”

The kiss that followed was tender and passionate and Violet Holmes would most certainly not have objected to that.

 

John stared at the throng of revellers and reflected on how much he missed the quiet of the woods in such occasions.

“Dearest, are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked, not for the first time.

“It’s a marvellous idea! You are wearing a tuxedo and look perfectly delicious. Besides, you’ve pledged to make me happy and this makes me delirious,” Sherlock exclaimed, as he sauntered towards the crowded entrance.

He observed smugly as John’s eyes widened and his jaw slackened at the sight of the broken glass mosaic that lined the walls.

They checked their hats and overcoats and were guided to a table in a secluded alcove. As soon as the waiter walked away after collecting their order, a young couple in fancy dress approached them.

The man was tall and dark with a raffish moustache; he was wearing a velvet doublet, calf-length breaches and an Elizabethan ruff around his neck and the woman, a pretty girl with a smooth polished complexion and a serpent-like little nose, was in crinolines and a meringue-like wig with dazzling white ringlets.

“Mr Watson-Holmes,” he greeted Sherlock with a mock-formal curtsey.

“Dear Mr Tennant, my lady, please let me introduce you to my husband, John Watson. John, this is Mr David Tennant and his bewitching wife Hermione.”

The introductions having been made, Sherlock marvelled at David’s attire, while John congratulated the lady on her regal dress.

“We are hosting a Mozart party tonight. It’s madness, I know, but Herm insisted we needed to set an example of class and elegance, after what happened at… well, no point in telling you, dear fellow, since you were there. To tell you the honest truth, I’m jolly glad that scoundrel has fled, he was never one of us. Sieg is particularly delighted: he was terrified Steenie would be caught in that spider’s web. I’m afraid he doesn’t know my brother well at all, but that’s love for you. But I am rabbiting on, dear fellows, and we’re dreadfully late already. Cheerio, old chaps, and enjoy the evening!”

“Not one of us, indeed. I imagine what he thinks of me,” John smirked.

The band was playing Duke Ellington and Sherlock was tapping his feet, as he poured the champagne into the crystal flutes.

“Oh, he doesn’t have a problem with you, I’m sure. But I advise you to keep away from his brother. I fear he would set his sights on you and I would have to challenge him to a duel.”

“A duel, you say? Is this fellow here, for I would very much like to make his acquaintance,” John replied, in jest.

Sherlock pouted a little and pretended to look around for Stephen Tennant. John was aware of the measure of fragility and insecurity that still persisted underneath the veneer of his husband’s sophisticated worldliness.

“Even if he were sitting on my lap, I would still see only you, my love,” he murmured.

The younger man pretended to be indifferent, but the pretty blush on his cheeks told the real story.

The music had slowed down and the band had embarked on a sultry tango.

Sherlock was eyeing the dance floor with childish enthusiasm, and John quickly concocted a plan.

“What a strange, exotic melody,” he remarked, frowning slightly.

“Evocative and sensual, I think,” replied his husband, dreamily.

“The dancers are too close together for a public gathering, it doesn’t seem decent,” he continued, stealing Mrs Hudson’s favourite line. He and the elderly lady had become good friends in the short time of their acquaintance, allied as they were in their constant preoccupation over Sherlock’s wellbeing.

“Decent is hardly their objective, John. They share an intimate moment, as their bodies come together,” Sherlock explained.

“What, like this,” John said, as he pulled his stunned husband up into his arms and dragged him onto the dancefloor.

“I lead, you follow,” he intimated “Slow-slow-quick-quick-slow, in case you’ve never done it before.”

Sherlock straightened to his full height and drawled: “Obviously, I know how to dance the tango!”

“Oh, you’re doing that again: the public school dandy who secretly wants to be ravished by the stable boy. I know all of your little tricks, my darling, you’re no longer fooling me.”

Sherlock let himself be guided, turned around, and even dipped, getting lost in the sensuality of the dance. Only towards the end, he found the voice to reply.

“You may know my tricks, but that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy them.”

John took his husband’s face in both his hands and pulled him closer, his breath tickling Sherlock’s lips.

“I enjoy every inch of you,” he whispered, before kissing him soundly.

 

“Wake up, lazybones! The sun is high in the sky and look at the state of you!”

John expostulated with fake annoyance, as he playfully slapped Sherlock’s bare arm, which was flung across his sleepy face.

“I’m dead,” his husband protested.

“You wouldn’t be if you’d stayed in bed with me, instead of playing the violin until cock-crow!”

“Speaking of which,” Sherlock said, suddenly awake. John was amazed at his husband’s ability to switch moods and states of being so seamlessly; sometimes it made him dizzy just witnessing those alterations; although, most of the times, if he were honest, the light-headedness was due to other, more pleasurable, factors. He ran a finger along the elegant line of Sherlock’s throat.

“I will have to be more careful in the future, choose a less visible spot,” he murmured, kissing the purple bruise he’d made the night before, just to the side of the Adam’s apple. It was that maddening freckle that got to him, and he regretted the result but certainly not the act itself.

“Silk scarves exist for a reason,” Sherlock suggested, and he arched his neck, tempting John into a repeat performance. He was rewarded with an open-mouth kiss which, regrettably, had no teeth in it. He sighed pitifully, making the other man laugh.

“We should go downstairs, before Mrs Hudson makes an apparition.”

“John, how many times should I tell you: she knows about our profession and its odd ways; she won’t come in unless there’s good reason for it.”

“Like you requesting tea and scones at all hours; I swear, had I known you were this demanding,” the older man joked.

“What? You wouldn’t have made love to me?” Sherlock taunted, pressing his naked body against John’s, who took no time in covering it with his own, pinning him to the mattress. “You wouldn’t have married me?” Sherlock insisted, his voice dropping to a low murmur.

“You’re right,” John said, darkly, “you have dozens of scarves,” and he attacked his husband’s neck with every intention of making him beg for forgiveness. But he knew it was a hopeless task, as Sherlock loved being marked, and would have John bite him all over, all night, all day, without respite.

“I love you, you devil,” he said, pulling Sherlock’s head down by tugging at his curls, which had now grown long enough to liken him to a modern Byron.

The younger man moaned at the sensation and opened his mouth, angling for a kiss, which started as a soft brush of lips, proceeded as a sensual mating of tongues and ended with Sherlock panting for breath and John working his way down his lover’s body, biting, licking and sucking until he reached his most precious prize.

“Look at how wet you are already,” he marvelled, unreasonably proud of his husband’s emissions.

Sherlock was about to mumble something to the effect of “shut up and make love to me,” but what came out of his throat was a string of cries and senseless words, as John licked a broad, sodden path from perineum to glans, only stopping to suckle at the heavy testicles, leaving them aching and drenched.

John was amazing at that; well, he was skilled at everything, but there was something in the way he ravished Sherlock’s cock that made the younger man lose all control. He splayed his legs and tilted his pelvis up and John understood: wetting his thumb on Sherlock’s slit, he went on to tease the tip of it inside his husband’s entrance, slowly at first, and then with furious yet shallow strokes.

Soon Sherlock was sobbing, asking for more, and getting it in the shape of a blunt finger being pushed inside him to the hilt and a firm hand closing around the root of his cock, as a determined mouth worked at his glans.

He climaxed for minutes, John suckling all his pleasure out of him, drop by drop.

When he came back to his senses, he felt vaguely guilty,

“What about you?” he slurred, as his husband caressed his still-twitching abdomen.

“Oh, you know me, I shall get my own back, eventually,” John replied and threw Sherlock such a wicked, lewd smile, he’d have started all over again, had he the strength.

“I’m an old man, you’ve married an old man,” Sherlock lamented, stretching his torso and arms prettily… and knowingly.

“Any younger and you’d be rid of me before we celebrate our first anniversary.”

“I won’t have any more talk about you leaving me. You are not allowed to abandon me unless I say so. And I will never say so,” the younger man declared.

“Once you’ve got a man in your blood….” he quoted, explaining “It was Mrs Donovan who said that to me once, and she was right. The moment you kissed me, I was lost. I couldn’t have given you up if a thousand Victors had threatened me with scandal and penury.”

“That’s because you’ve never tried penury and you quite enjoy scandal,” John remarked, earning himself a knock in the ribs. Sherlock reared up his head like a disgruntled ostrich, his eyes glaring and lips pouting.

“Are you punishing me for telling the truth, my dearest?” John said, smiling

In reply, Sherlock’s face darkened even further, and now a tinge of real hurt was gleaming in his eyes.

“You doubt my love for you,” he said, unable to prevent his voice from shaking a little.

Immediately, John’s mood changed, and he forced his recalcitrant husband into his arms, holding him tight to his chest; he brushed his fingers through the tangled hair, while his other hand caressed down the graceful back.

“Never say that, my darling. I am sorry if I caused any pain,” he whispered, “it was horrid of me. Please forgive me.”

“I love you immensely,” his husband said, in a small, trembling voice.

“And I you, my love, so much so that at times I have to make light of it for fear it will undo me. But no more of this! Kiss me and forgive me,” John said, and Sherlock looked up at him, wide-eyed and young; oh, so very young! Desire flooded his veins and that never-quite-dormant instinct of possession gnawed at his insides.

“Look at you,” he said in a ragged, haunted voice, “look at you.  I need to have you now.”

Sherlock didn’t have to feign or even exaggerate his reaction; whenever John became hungry and predatory, he instinctively surrendered, body and soul.

He became an offering, tender and flushed, open and wet.

“Oh, have me, have me, John, please,” he begged, and slowly, slowly, he came up on his hands and knees, arching his back and neck and flexing the muscles of his shoulders; the motion like that of a tide rippling through the lithe body and crashing at the wellspring of his desire. John prepared him as quickly and efficiently as he could, but turned him round and arranged him on his back before entering him. He wanted to watch Sherlock’s face as he pleasured him, to make certain that his husband saw how madly he was loved.

If words betrayed them at times, their bodies always sang in unison and when his lover plunged in, sudden and deep, Sherlock was ready for the stab of pleasure that cut him to his core. Regardless, he let out a scream and his eyes opened wide, his lips bitten red and parted.

John kissed him and fucked him deep and hard, pressing down on him so that there was hardly any space between their bodies, and his lover’s erection was being squeezed with every thrust. Sherlock felt the throb of orgasm start at the base of his spine, spreading to his groin, his thighs, his belly; he shook with the strength of his release, and John increased his violence and speed until there was no breath left in Sherlock’s chest and he wailed, a yowl that drove his husband crazy and plunged him into the same abyss of mindless pleasure.

“I told you once that I will die in you,” John panted, licking his husband’s bruised neck.

“Yes, yes,” the younger man moaned, shaking like a sapling in high wind. “And you also said you didn’t care.”

“Best way to leave this world, no doubt about it.”

“I won’t hear any more talk about you leaving me,” Sherlock protested again, as his husband cleaned him up with a discarded sheet. He let him, lying there like a child, like the time they ran in the rain, on the first night they spent together. So many memories already - John thought - and his heart filled with joy and wonder at the good fortune that had brought this unique and marvellous man into his life.

“Aye, my love, but if you want to keep me, you’ll have to feed me,” he joked.

“Such a tedious occupation,” Sherlock expostulated, shaking his wild nest of hair.

“But essential nonetheless… and Lestrade mentioned he would pay us a visit later today, which means your mind should be in fine fettle.”

“My mind is always in perfect condition.”

“Of course it is. Now, stop distracting me and go get ready”

Sherlock mumbled something and with his patented air of offended royalty marched towards the washroom.

 

“Dear Mrs Hudson, this ginger cake is absolutely delicious,” Lestrade exclaimed.

The lady in question blushed and patted the Inspector’s shoulder.

After John’s arrival at Baker Street, she’d initially left the two newlyweds alone until she’d decided they needed looking after. Two men, with only a girl doing the cleaning and cooking for them, would surely appreciate a little additional help, she’d reasoned. Little did she know that Sherlock would start treating her like his previous housekeeper - a lady apparently named Betts – and demanding refreshments at the most inopportune times. She loved to remind him that she was only his landlady, but secretly she was only too happy to oblige, as it allowed her to keep a watchful eye on Violet’s dear boy and his dashing husband.

“You’re too kind, Inspector. At least you and John appreciate my efforts,” was her parting shot, and Sherlock opened his mouth to remonstrate, but took one look at John and stayed silent.

Once Mrs Hudson had left, Lestrade’s expression became sombre.

“We have received news from our colleagues in France that a change of allegiances has taken place in the criminal underworld. A year or so ago, a spate of burglaries in opulent mansions had been ascribed to a notorious delinquent, a man from Marseille who was running a very profitable racket. That man was found dead around the time Moriarty disappeared from London.”

“And another burglary has taken place,” John suggested.

“Worse than that,” Lestrade replied.

“Someone of importance committed suicide, or at least that’s what it was made to look like, but in fact the police suspect foul play.”

“Yes, but how do you know?”

“Just a guess,” Sherlock replied, winking at his husband.

Lestrade gave John an eloquent look.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you. He has taken to speaking in riddles and I have learned that the quickest way to obtain an explanation is leaving him to it.”

“I see,” Lestrade replied, although he clearly did not. “I would be very grateful if you could…”

“Don’t mention it, of course we will go! We will pack and take the first train from Victoria, final destination Lyon.”

“I thought you said Marseille,” John asked Lestrade.

“He’s right, although I still don’t see… The suspicious suicide took place in the proximity of Lyon, not too far from the Swiss border.”

“Dear Lestrade, I’m immensely glad you came to me with this information. Please return to your duties and inform your colleagues of the Sûreté that we will contact them as soon as we arrive in Lyon. Come on John, the game is afoot!”

A swirl of his silk dressing gown, a light in his mutable eyes, and John had never seen him so magnificently alive. And he would be there with him, by his side, forever defending his honour and his life.

 


End file.
